⭐PART 6 — The Procedure That Made Everything Worse
When you’ve lived with pain long enough, hope becomes something you don’t trust — but still cling to anyway.
So when the same doctor who inserted the IUD that perforated my uterus suggested an endometrial ablation, I listened. I didn’t trust her — I didn’t trust anyone at that point — but I was desperate. After decades of bleeding, pain, and dismissal, even a harmful doctor promising relief sounded like a lifeline.
It wasn’t a new beginning.
It was exhaustion disguised as hope.
This doctor had already caused me harm, but she talked about ablation like it was the solution she’d been holding back. The fix. The cure. The thing that would finally give me my life back.
I wanted to believe her more than I wanted to doubt her.
The Ablation That Betrayed Me
She performed the endometrial ablation and inserted Nexplanon during the same course of treatment. I remember lying there afterward, imagining a life where pain wasn’t my default state — where I could wake up and not brace myself for the day ahead.
But instead of relief, the pain escalated.Instead of healing, something inside me unraveled.
The ablation didn’t stop the bleeding.
Nexplanon didn’t stop the bleeding either.
It wasn’t until progesterone was added on top of Nexplanon that the bleeding finally stopped — not because the ablation worked, but because my body needed multiple hormonal barricades in place just to function.
The bleeding ended.
The damage did not.
My uterus was quieter, but it wasn’t healed.
I wasn’t living — I was enduring.
The Doctor Who Finally Saw the Damage… and Broke Me Anyway
After the ablation failed, I saw a different doctor — one with glowing reviews and a reputation for handling complex cases. I walked into that appointment scared but cautiously hopeful. Maybe, finally, someone would help.
During the physical exam, she stopped and stared.
She examined my uterus and said:
“It looks like that IUD was removed recently — maybe a month ago.”
But the IUD had been removed years earlier.
The scarring, the trauma, the damage — it was all still there.
She saw it.
She knew.
She finally validated that what I’d been experiencing wasn’t imaginary, hormonal, or exaggerated.
For one heartbreaking second, I thought this was the turning point.
And then she looked at my body — not my chart, not my medical history, not my pain — and fat-shamed me.
No plan.
No compassion.
No humanity.
Just blame.
I left that appointment sobbing. I cried the entire drive home. And somewhere on that drive, something inside me broke.
Not from adenomyosis.
From betrayal.
The Quiet Collapse
After that day, I stopped going to doctors.
I stopped advocating.
I stopped hoping.
I stopped believing anyone was coming to save me.
My uterus was a battlefield, but the war wasn’t what defeated me — the medical system did.
I wasn’t living anymore.
I was just managing symptoms like a hostage doing whatever it took to survive.
The bleeding had stopped, but the fear remained. If insurance ever refused a refill, if anything changed, if the fragile balance shifted — what then?
Stability didn’t feel safe.
It felt temporary.
The Year I Disappeared
From 2017 until the fall of 2018, I wasn’t a person with a future. I was a body in pain navigating days that felt pointless. I drifted through life without expectation, purpose, or belief that anything could be different.
I wasn’t waiting for help.
I didn’t think help existed. Other than family and my best friend, no one believed me. Or worse, they didn’t care.
But Endings Have a Way of Disguising Themselves
Because just when I had stopped believing anyone would ever take my pain seriously, I met someone who did — someone who listened without minimizing, questioned without doubting, and believed me before the medical system ever did.
I didn’t know it yet, but the person who would help change everything wasn’t a doctor.
She was the one who would become my safe place.