OPINION | The Silent Pain of Patriarchy in Medicine. Endometriosis is radically underfunded and researched globally. One in 10 women has endometriosis, yet the research lags, with the same treatments used in the 1970s often being prescribed today.
A woman holds a hot water bottle to her lower abdomen while lying in bed. Many sufferers of the abdominal disease endometriosis suffer from severe symptoms and associated restrictions in everyday life. dreadful, all too familiar radiating pain seeps into my dream. Now half-conscious, I am still hoping that the pain is part of the dream but, as I become aware of the blood in the bed and on my pyjamas, I steel myself to wake up and face the full wrath of my body.
This visit began a lifelong journey into what can only be termed experiments with reproductive health, some rash, some damaging, and many accompanied by a medical paternalism that left me feeling de-selfed. I was told that I needed to have a dilation and curettage , which is a procedure to remove tissue from inside your uterus. I was also put onto contraceptives to help regulate my menstruation cycle. Both measures did very little to alleviate my condition.
The pain does not let go and, as an adult, working, being a mother and just living has been constantly interrupted by periods of ill-health. At 21, I finally got a diagnosis beyond the usual comments about growing up, getting on with it and getting married. The diagnosis was endometriosis. It came after my father and I stumbled on an article inWe learnt that endometriosis is a chronic autoimmune gynaecological disease in which the tissue that usually lines the uterus also grows on outside of it.
When I turned 30, I was astounded to discover that I was pregnant and I was elated. I had received a gift I didn’t even know I wanted or needed. The pregnancy came to an end a month early with an abrupted placenta and I had a night of terror where I was left in a hospital bed, covered in blood, and with no word about my child. But my son was okay and today he is a beautiful 13-year-old, the great gift of my life.
The hysterectomy dramatically reduced the pain, and for the first time since puberty, I could live a normal life. As I thought back on all the time lived in agony, I came to terms with the damage done by years of often crude and extreme healthcare interventions, and a series of doctors who thought, in the classic patriarchal trope, that the problem was that I was hysterical.
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