High Risk Drama
Forgive my irreverence. I'm just echoing the absurd endometriosis extremities I've heard from unknowing people over the years who, kill dem dead, think they're on point with their utterances and can teach the actually initiated something.
Ah, the haughtiness of ignorance.
Who's at risk? Any woman. Any girl. Your mother, your daughter, your friend. Oh, did I mention ... you.
Endometriosis may strike any woman any time in her pre-menopausal life, and many girls and women suffer years before correct diagnosis.
There was a time when endo was referred to as the career-woman's curse, because it was considered to mostly affect women who put off pregnancy to focus on a working lifestyle. This has since long been disproved; and there is actually a prevalence of endo among women who have been pregnant one or more times.As I live & breathe
This is not to say that lifestyle aspects cannot affect your endo status. Certainly your diet, exercise and nutritional supplements balancing can play a part. However, other issues can account for it presenting in your body: family history, estrogen levels, anatomic issues, exposure to environmental toxins, stress.My entry into endo came like the proverbial wrecking ball on the first day of school for Form 3. Before that, two years of menstruation had been a breeze, to the point I used to think peers were a bit fakey with all their "Oh, the agony!" during their periods.
I had to miss the first day of school because of the pain, the vomiting, the heavy bleeding. How could I have known how my life was to have altered from that moment?
What caused it to come for me? Most likely severe shift of estrogen production; the stress of a very laboured, dramatic puberty; less running around in childhood games every day and entering into a more sedentary, bookish way of living; my fixation with devouring flour products. All that and more, I'm sure.
Teen Titanic
A study done over five years ago revealed that more than 50 per cent of teen girls who underwent surgery for severe pelvic pain were discovered to have endometriosis. So there is a fight to make the Human Papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination mandatory to teen girls, even though there is a big association to life sexual decision-making attached to whether it will affect a girl's life or not.
Meanwhile, endo can simply drop upon you where you stand, once you are female and experience a period, but there is no big push to make it mandatory for girls to be effectively educated about lifestyle activities they should adopt, to help empower them to combat what is actually an epidemic.
So is it any wonder that every year more teenage girls are being diagnosed with endo and, like me and millions upon millions of others, having their entire lives changed for ill.
Though there are the means to take care of them, we're letting them sink ... like the Titanic.
The old saying goes, "If you teach a man, you teach a man. But if you teach a woman, you teach a village."
If you suffer under endo, take time to learn how to help yourself, and you will be able to help other women, too, by sharing the knowledge on.
In beauty may you walk
Next post: Scaling Pain: Know your levels
Graphic Illustrations: Endo & (M)any Woman, by Jhaye-Q
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