MY ARTWORK for endometriosis pain often involves a wall effect.
         Pain builds walls: the kind that keep you shut away from life's beauties, life's joys. The kind that hide the sun, that break your heart, hurt your spirit, oppress you with despair. Walls that kill hope.
         Let us fight to break down such walls!
         Remember, we are taking the "know your enemy" approach in our war on endo pain. We will know our enemy intimately, the way it has come to know us.
         We'll start the learning with When.

         But, "Oh," you say, "I know when I feel pain, so I don't need schooling on that."

         It won't hurt to attend. It may even help alleviate hurt in the long run. See, identifying when you feel your pains can help you define what your separate endo issues are, so you can treat with each "elementally."

When the Hurt's In Charge

• MENSTRUAL PAIN: Dysmenorrhea is the clinical word for cramps, and it can be felt in the back just as much as the belly, and stretch out from both to affect other reaches. Many women accept that extended pre- and during menstruation cramps are just par for the period course; but funnily enough, it can be the earliest sign that something is wrong and serve as a diagnostic indicator of endo.
• PELVIC PAIN: Once you learn how many pelvic organs the female body has, you become aware of what all endo can use to sling spasms at you, and not the nice kind. Pain can bombard one pelvic organ or several, your uterus or/and ovary (or/and both ovaries) or/and anything else that's "down there." Bloating can result, and that gives a specific painful discomfort of its own added to the cramping. "Well isn't it just like my period pain, then?" Yes, except pelvic pain does not confine itself just to your actual time of the month. You can be beset during your ovulation and before your period actually comes.
• BOWEL MOVEMENTS PAIN: "Just take a purge before your period," I've heard tell many a time. Like it's a simple as that. But this specific pain tells you that there are most likely lesions located between the uterus and the rectum, putting such pressure on both that you feel it when you try to pass. Furthermore, endo can be mistaken with irritable bowel syndrome because implants near the bowel produce chronic gastrointestinal symptoms. So while a doctor may be treating you for just IBS, you may be left to continue suffering from unidentified other endo-spurred gastro factors (and endo itself) like  yeast infections, prostaglandins release, endometrial tissue present in the cul-de-sac and out of wack intestinal bacteria flora. 
• SEX PAIN: Talk about knowing something intimately, right. Almost all endo-copers face this, with about two-thirds of us feeling dyspareunia, pain even after intercourse. Endo most occurs behind the uterus, in the cul-de-sac called pouch-of-Douglas. Lesions here can force the uterus into a tilted-back position (retroversion), bringing on unreasonable pain during vaginal penetration as the uterus shifts around or is totally pulled outward. The penis itself can damage with each thrust, by bruising or tearing present endometrial implants. This can cause bleeding after sex, and other complications one might encounter from an open wound. It can all be worse if you have sex while menstruating, as it will take longer to detect if you are bleeding from tearing and need to treat with that before it gets infected.
• OTHER AGONIES: Speaking of infections, the pain brought on by inflammation trying to battle those is severe and takes a long time to counter, because you have to fight the infection itself. Add to that, the resultant fever can actually kill you. Sorry to be blunt, but this is serious. Other symptoms, not immediately perceived as being painful, can also add aches to an already over-burdened body: nausea, vomiting, upset stomach, diarrhea, constipation and dizziness or passing out. There are also headaches, swollen limbs, hurts that come just from trying to walk, move at all, even sleep.

         These are among only the physical pains of endometriosis. Each one can indicate an issue we need to be looking at and doing something about.
         I suggest you refer back to the post, "The Agony Is the Beat."
         Please, do not sit back. I want you to groan and fear endo pain so much that you are willing to take committed steps to overthrowing it, if not completely, at least for almost that.

In beauty may you walk

Next post: Whyfore Art Thou Agony?