- It was my very first period, when I was nine, so I was very young. I'm sorry. I was on vacation with my family, we were at the beach, and I remember I came out of the ocean and my mom had just started running really fast. And she picked me up, brought me back to the hotel room, I literally was like, oh my god, I'm, you know bleeding, I'm dying. It was my first thought. The pain had not subsided, and the rest of the day and that night it got way worse. My entire abdomen was seizing up, I was in just extreme, intense pain. I went to my first gynecologist at 14. You know there was no question and answer to try and figure out is there something wrong. It's, So I've heard you have really bad cramps, like, oh, that's really tough. Alright, well we're gonna put you on birth control, we're gonna get this under control. Anytime I would complain about my cramps getting worse, he would change my birth control. When I would try to have a new conversation with a new gynecologist, it was literally like Groundhog Day. Like, oh I'm really sorry, you just seem to be one of those girls who just has really bad menstrual cycles. You don't think to research it on your own because you feel like you have an expert telling you well, if this doesn't fix it, you're just unlucky. A random article that I found online mentioned endometriosis, so I started researching like a madwoman, and then I realized these are all of my symptoms that I've had since I was nine years old. I was 35 by the time I was diagnosed. So over 20 years I was in extreme pain begging for help, and nobody giving me answers. But I did my research and that's the first time as a woman I'd took the power and put it in my hands. If you're trusting another human being with your body, you need to be damn sure that they're giving you the options that are right for your body and your life. From your emotions, to you physical body, spiritually, everything about you, there is nobody else who knows you better than yourself. You're the expert of your body, not your doctor, you are.
