NEW YEAR NOT ALWAYS NEW LIFE. Endometriosis… period pain? I don’t want pity… I want answers

I think this writing can very well summarize my story

New Year, not always new life

Written by Maria Antonia Pacheco
Saturday, January 03, 2009
New Year, they say, what a new life, although for some it is more of the same. I have always thought that we should tell things because it is the only way that others can find out what our situation is, and that way we can help those who are in our same situation.

But now I have been a few days, almost a few weeks, not knowing if I should talk or shut up. My position now is not that of two or three years ago, perhaps now I can do harm and not help, all those reflections have been going through my head for weeks. And when the pain is a little tolerable, I play some fun and and interactive sports betting games via ufabet168.bet.

Today I know that I have to talk, because it is the only way for our reality to change, today I have to tell my reality.

As we know, not all endometriosis is the same, thank God, but I’m talking about mine and my body.

This afternoon my daughter told me to take her to a supermarket to do some shopping that she had left for kings, even though I could hardly move, I said yes.

I’ve been standing for about three months, with a big swelling in my stomach again, with a belly that looks like I’m pregnant (just like three years ago), the difference is that my ovaries don’t hurt, that pain that wouldn’t let me walk more than ten steps, but the longer I stand the more I feel like knives are sticking in me, a pain that I know and thought had disappeared from my life, with the hysterectomy.

I know that despite the removal of my organs, I have an implant in my peritoneum again and I wonder?

Where did it come from if I have not had my period for three years?

Don’t they say that endometriosis goes away with menopause?

From the beginning I refused to take hormonal treatment because I knew it could be harmful to the endometriosis, even though I was told there were no problems.

The same day of the new year, I had such a strong pain in my stomach that my husband had to help me to stand up, that pain that when it hits me I have to relieve myself, but this time it was not second, this time it lasted about 10 minutes, when I was getting dressed to go to the hospital, I stopped a little, I went to bed and it was happening, today I have a sharp pain in that same area. I know that something happened in my belly that I could not stand.

With all this that I am telling you, you would think that this is a big deal, but there is more. I’m waiting for the holidays to pass so that I can have another operation, if this time I have to have my labia majora removed, because of a hydrogenitis in the vulva (which I have been carrying with me in my armpit and legs for 30 years, removing pieces of my body and draining them every time I have a lump), but of course, I have to take before the operation, the corticoids for the asthma. I am also waiting for the trauma surgeon for a possible operation in the shoulder, I have a calcification and two cysts, due to my arthritis.

Mammography every six months because of the fibroadenomas I have in my left breast, as well as the continuous pain between the fibromyalgia and the arthritis.

You may think that I care about all this? and it is true, but my story is not for you sick people like me, my story is for the professionals and the administration. For those who are not in a hurry to give solutions to women in this situation, for those who do not care that this situation that I describe is passing from generation to generation, mothers, brothers, nephews, children and grandchildren.

You know what I felt this afternoon when I saw my daughter limping, because of the pain caused by his arthritis in his knee, you know what I felt a few days ago when my little grandson had to put oxygen at seven months and is already taking steroids. Can you imagine what I feel when they tell me that I am going to be a grandmother of a girl? Pain, a lot of pain and a lot of fear to think that this will reach her that nobody stops. This thing that our government and our Minister of Health is taking so calmly.

You know the helplessness of seeing how my grandmother, mother, sisters and cousins have gone through the same thing and I want to spare my children and grandchildren.

They have no idea, they keep looking at us in pieces, the vulva, the ovaries (whoever has saved them) arthritis, asthma and there is no one capable of looking at a person and saying “something is wrong”, it is not normal so many diseases in the same person.

Today I want to make an appeal to those doctors, who I know enter and read the blog and the web. I know that I am perhaps an extreme case, but for that reason I offer myself to be investigated. I offer myself so that some professional can begin to see that this is not a problem of ovaries or uterus, that it is a problem of the immune system and that we need investigation.

I offer myself because I want to leave a different future to those I love most and to all the women and men who suffer.

You know? In some moments when I started this fight, there were people who said that what I wanted was to be the protagonist, today I think I have shown that what I was looking for was justice. Today I am “a public woman” understand it as you want, so in addition to this writing I leave you some photos, photos of a woman who has been sick since 14 years, a woman who will continue to fight even if it is the last thing I do. A mother who knows that the best inheritance she can leave to her children is health and that is why she will continue to demand, even if she has almost no strength, what belongs to us by right, “HEALTH, RESEARCH AND COMMITMENT.
I ask the Ministry of Health to take action on this, which is its responsibility, to look after the health of the citizens.

And to the Minister of Equality, I ask you not to look so much at Africa (with all due respect to African women) and to look here beside you, at the fact that there are women who castrate them inside and out and without knowing why. They take away the uterus, the ovaries, the vulva as if they were pimples.

In Africa it is supposed to be cultural here, it is because of the neglect of our administration.

Well, Minister, from Cadiz I tell you that if by March (International Endometriosis Week) there is no response from you or from the Minister of Equality, Mª Antonia Pacheco Cumbre, president of ADAEC and FADAE, will make the campaign for the diffusion of the International Endometriosis Week, in front of your Ministry. With whistles and banners as seen by her predecessor.

Because it is time for our central government to take a stand, and not in the long run, by invoking the powers of the autonomous communities, because Andalusia has responded. And now it is your turn, Minister.

A president of an association is for a politician, a mother is for no one.

AND OF COURSE I CAN TELL YOU THAT NOT ALL WOMEN HAVE TO BE IN THE SAME CONDITIONS, EVERY WOMAN AND EVERY ILLNESS IS DIFFERENT, BUT THIS IS MY STORY AND MINE AND IT IS AT THE SERVICE OF ALL THE WOMEN I CAN HELP.
And unfortunately those of many women who prefer or cannot expose their situation.

To say that after a few days I enter through an instinctive obstruction, my current situation is much more complicated, for months I can not walk my right foot hurts when I walk more than a hundred meters … but the bike saves me because I hit the pedal with the heel, my shoulders have broken both and I’m waiting for intervention first of the right and then the left.
And pending an intervention for a hernia that comes out continuously at the slightest effort.
I can get out very little, my arms can not move, only from the elbows down. I can not make efforts because of the hernia and I can not walk because of the pain of the foot.
The only window I have left to continue my fight is this one, the new technologies. I keep fighting…I keep wanting to hold on to the only hope I have left. Even though I cannot get back all that I have lost, my children, my grandchildren and all those who come after me will find themselves in a different situation. But for that we need help, support, networking and above all awareness.

I have always thought that we must tell things because it is the only way for others to find out what our situation is, and that way we can help those who are in the same situation.

But now I have been a few days, almost a few weeks, not knowing if I should talk or shut up. My position now is not that of two or three years ago, perhaps now I can do harm and not help, all those reflections have been going through my head for weeks.

Today I know that I have to talk, because it is the only way that our reality changes, today I have to tell my reality….