I knew my body needed to heal and was in no fit state to carry a baby as it was. Fertility, I insisted, should be placed on the back burner indefinitely. I jumped at the offer! I would try anything, although by this point I felt somewhat sceptical about the impact that a natural approach could achieve. Katie suggested that she could work with me and that with her guidance we might be able to improve my symptoms and make me truly well again. She contacted me saying that she liked my post and agreed that the traditional endo diet is not as healing as it could be - and is often counterproductive. I was also punishing myself with heavy exercise daily with the thought that this was healthy and would help me to manage my pain better and to lose the weight I seemed to be gaining despite my attempt to restrict calories.Īnd that's where my association with Katie from Heal Endo started. I was also pretty miserable (I'm a massive foodie at heart) and didn't feel that the endo diet was nourishing me in the way that I hoped, as I wrote about in my blog HERE. I cut everything- gluten, dairy, soy, meat. Like many of my endo sisters I turned to natural approaches with the aim of prompting my health, and started following the 'endo diet' religiously. Two years post surgery I had also been unable to conceive which was making me feel anxious, depressed, and like a failure. While excision surgery helped to reduce my pain and symptoms significantly, I soon realised there was a huge difference between 'having less pain' and 'feeling truly well'. I joined a local support group and did lots of reading, and decided the best course of action for a chance of recovery and to boost my fertility was to have excision surgery, which I underwent in London two years later. I was only 25 and having children hadn't ever really crossed my mind at this point, despite recently becoming engaged to my partner Simon. The news that I had a chronic and incurable condition that I would have to somehow manage for the rest of my life was more upsetting than the fertility bombshell at the time. I was hospitalized with diarrhoea so severe at one point that I almost died of dehydration! A year later a diagnosis of severe adenomyosis followed. These symptoms had worsened over time and become increasingly debilitating to the point where I was considering dropping out of my PhD studies as I felt too ill and exhausted to continue working. Not that it was a huge surprise after some speedy Googling- I had been suffering with severe period pain, fatigue, bowel and bladder pain, as well as shoulder pain since I was 12 years old. I had never even heard of endometriosis and no explanation was provided. ''Oh, and come back and see in a year when you've been unable to conceive, if that's what you want'' she added.Īnd that was my terrible introduction to the crazy world that is life with endometriosis. She recommended that I go to see my GP to have the Mirena coil fitted. ''Bad news, you have endometriosis and it's really bad, it's EVERYWHERE''. I remember waking up from my first laparoscopy with my surgeon hovering over me. My fertility journey with severe endometriosis and adenomyosis: An ode to Heal Endo. See, good things can happen to endo-warriors :) This is her story in her own words, below. What happened? Almost 3 months to the day Claire was pregnant! I cried I was so happy for this amazing woman. Her previous "endo diet" of restriction was pushed to the curb, and in came the big guns of deep nutrition I speak of so much on this site. I reminded her it took 3 full months for both egg and sperm to mature, and then we set about making a nutrition program that Claire diligently undertook. I adored Claire to pieces, so I offered to work with her to help build her body up (her husbands too) for pregnancy. She and her wonderful husband had been trying for over 2 years by that point. We became new age pen pals.Ĭlaire was also trying to get pregnant. She's basically a British bad-ass endo-warrior who, in her soft spoken way, helps people listen and understand what endometriosis means. Turns out Claire isn't just a good writer, she also is deeply involved in the endo community as an activist, awareness raiser, and volunteer (check out the video on the right).
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