Deirdre Whiston

Deirdre Whiston is an artist and long-time Endometriosis and lymphedema warrior. She is a graduate of Parsons, having studied abroad for undergraduate and graduate work. She is an NYS art educator who, after 18 years, had to retire due to an injury sustained by a student. 

She has been battling puberty onset lymphedema stage 2 and endometriosis stage 4+ for decades. She was diagnosed in 2003 with stage 4 endometriosis after having extensive ablation surgery. Unfortunately, her endometriosis was progressing, and no doctor, including the first surgeon, was willing to take her case due to the complexity over a full decade. She continued in excruciating pain while teaching full-time, searching for a doctor to take on her case. Finally, in 2014 she found her excision specialist and was immediately brought in for excision surgery with a team to address all her issues. That was the beginning of her next chapter, with many more excision surgeries, the development of adenomyosis, and a frozen pelvis leading to a full hysterectomy and oophorectomy. Her journey continues on to pelvic floor therapy. If she had only found the specialist sooner. For so many years, so many doctors were not listening or explaining why they could not handle her case, and her endometriosis obliterated her.

But all along her journey from the time she was a child, Deirdre was always drawing. It is her natural instinct, and unknowingly from her childhood, it has always held an escape, a cathartic release. Art had always been not only a desire but a necessity. As an educator, her main focus was to give her students a safe space and a way to use art as an escape, the same that art has given her. As a patient advocate, she shares her experiences and how she has survived nearly four decades of pain through art.