Tag: Painful periods

Snow-covered evergreen trees silhouetted against a soft winter dawn sky, centered over a gently blurred background, symbolizing waking up to a new beginning after surgery.

The Moment My After Began

December 18, 2025 / Sandi

Part 10 — The Days Before, The Day Of, and The Moment After

Content Note: surgical anxiety, medical trauma, reproductive health

There’s a strange kind of countdown that happens before major surgery — a slow drip of days where hope and terror sit in the same room, staring at each other.

I thought the week before my hysterectomy would feel peaceful.

Relieved.

Certain.

Instead, it felt like standing on a cliff edge with the wind shifting every few seconds.

The Lead-Up: Hope, Fear, and Every “What If”

My biggest fear wasn’t the surgery itself.

It was that it would be cancelled.

Bad weather, a paperwork mistake, a cruel cosmic joke — I imagined every scenario where the universe might yank it away. After decades of dismissal, having real help lined up felt almost too fragile to trust.

But beneath that fear was another one, quieter and sharper:

“What if the pain doesn’t go away?”

“What if my uterus wasn’t the whole problem?”

Holding those questions was like holding my breath for days.

And then came the moments that made everything real.

The call from the clinic about pre-op procedures.

The checklist.

The instructions.

The confirmation that yes, this was happening.

But the moment that hit deepest was picking up my partner — my then-girlfriend, now wife — from the train station. She insisted on being there with me. Seeing her step off that train felt like the universe saying:

“You don’t have to do this alone.”

A couple nights before surgery, something beautiful happened — tender, intimate, and full of trust. I won’t write it explicitly here, but it was a moment that made me feel fully loved, fully wanted, and fully held in my body for maybe the first time in years. We watched fireworks through my bedroom window, shared something soft and close, and for a few hours I let myself stop being afraid.

The following night she made me my “last meal” before fasting — peanut butter and jelly and a few simple things she knew I loved. It wasn’t fancy. It didn’t have to be. It was love in its purest form: small, thoughtful, grounding.

🚗 The Drive to the Hospital

My best friend drove us.

My partner sat in the back, rubbing my shoulders to keep me anchored.

About ten minutes away, I started sinking lower and lower into the seat — like my body was trying to hide from what was coming. 🤣

My bestie kept talking to distract me.My partner kept touching my shoulders softly.I kept sinking.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot, I was a puddle of nerves and used facial tissue.

🏥 The Day of Surgery: Fear, Kindness, and That Last Moment

Inside, everyone was incredibly kind.The staff could tell I was scared — mostly because I was openly crying the entire time. I let my best friend and my partner answer most of the questions because I was shaking too hard to think straight.

When the surgeon came in to the operating room. The same one who had held my fear so gently days earlier.

She asked, “Are you ready?”

I burst into tears.

“I’m so scared,” I said — or maybe sobbed.

She came around behind me where I was lying on the table, bent down, stroked my face gently, and said:

“I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.”

That was the last thing I remember.

Being held.

Being reassured.

Being believed.

If there’s a way to fall asleep feeling safe, that was it.

🌄 Waking Up: The Beginning of My After

Waking up from surgery felt like blinking through fog. I could barely stay conscious. I remember being wheeled outside into the sunlight, my best friend pulling the car around, and my wife holding my hand, telling me everything went beautifully.

I remember pharmacy bags.

I remember laughing that I was too tired to walk and then promptly falling asleep with my head on the dining room table when we got home.

They wrapped me in a blanket, propped a pillow under my cheek, and let me rest right there. I was comfy. 😂

I don’t remember talking to my doctor afterward — it’s all haze and fragments — but I remember the feeling:

A strange, quiet lightness.

The pain was there, but it wasn’t the same pain. Not that grinding, consuming ache that had shaped my life for decades. This was surgical pain — sharp, clear, temporary.

I actually had to be reminded to take my pain meds.

My wife looked at me wide-eyed and said:

“I never realized how much pain you were in daily until now. You had major surgery — you should be feeling worse than this.”

And that’s when it hit me.

I had lived in so much pain for so long that even post-surgery pain was easier.

Lighter.

More merciful.

🌱 The Shift Into the After

I didn’t wake up healed in every way.

But I woke up different.

I woke up with a future that didn’t feel like something to endure.

And maybe that’s what healing really is:

Not the absence of pain, but the presence of possibility.

When the Shoe Never Dropped-Part 11

The Appointment That Changed Everything

December 15, 2025 / Sandi

Part 9 — The Appointment That Changed Everything

Content Note: medical trauma, medical dismissal, mention of hysterectomy (non-graphic)

There are days that divide your life into before and after.

For years, I lived in the before — where pain was normal, bleeding was normal, dismissal was normal, and survival was the only thing my body seemed capable of.

But this day was different.

It didn’t start with hope.

It started with fear.

I was terrified this would be just another appointment where my pain was questioned, not a moment where a doctor finally believed me.

🌫️ Walking Into a Clinic Full of Ghosts

My partner did something no one else ever had:

She didn’t tell me to “push through.”

They didn’t suggest I was overreacting.

They didn’t minimize a single thing I’d endured.

They researched instead — reviews, credentials, malpractice records, red flags, success stories — all the parts of the medical maze I was too exhausted and traumatized to navigate myself. When they finally looked up from the screen, they said:

“This place feels different. I think we should try.”

Try mattered.

It wasn’t a promise of answers — just a promise that I wouldn’t face another disappointment alone.

So I went.

But walking into that clinic felt like stepping back onto a battlefield I barely survived the first time. The antiseptic smell yanked me into memories I hated. The waiting room chairs whispered the hours I’d spent rocking through pain while being ignored. Every closed door felt like another verdict:

You’re wrong about your own body.

❤️ The Moment I Couldn’t Pretend Anymore

I wish I could say I marched in bravely.

I didn’t.

My voice shook. My heart pounded. I was less afraid of my symptoms than I was of the humiliation that might come next. After years of medical gaslighting, dismissal felt more dangerous than the pain itself.

Because if this doctor didn’t believe me, I knew I wouldn’t have the strength to try again.

🔍 The First Time a Doctor Finally Believed Me

When the door opened and the doctor walked in, I braced myself — armor on, shoulders tense, ready for the impact of disbelief.

But something unexpected happened:

She listened.

Not politely.

Not impatiently.

Not waiting for her turn to invalidate me.

She listened with curiosity, not suspicion. She had already reviewed the mountain of medical records I sent — every test, note, ER visit, dismissal, and contradictory opinion. She didn’t need to poke and prod or order another scan to stall the inevitable.

After I finished speaking, she looked directly at me and said:

“I believe you.”

Three words, and the air in the room changed.

For decades, my pain had been screaming into the void — and no one cared.

Until now.

🌼 The Twist I Didn’t Expect

Then came the part that shattered me:

“Your case is too complex for me. I don’t think I could perform the surgery properly.”

A lifetime of neglect had turned my body into a medical Rubik’s Cube no one wanted to solve. Thickened uterine walls. Complications from past decisions. A puzzle built by indifference.

For a moment, hope dangled — and then snapped.

But before I shattered, she continued:

“I know someone who specializes in cases like yours. I’m sending your file to her today.”

It felt like being handed a key to a locked door I wasn’t allowed to open yet — but at least the door existed.

🌸 The Doctor Who Finally Saw Me

When I met the specialist, she didn’t start with charts or jargon. She said:

“Tell me what’s been going on — in your own words.”

I told her everything. All of it. Every year of pain, every ER visit, every month lost to bleeding, every dismissed plea for help.

She listened, reviewed my records, and then said the sentence that cracked something wide open in me:

“You’re not living — you’re just surviving.”

Then:

“I can get you in for a hysterectomy in about a week and a half.”

I didn’t feel victory.

I felt grief.

Grief for the teenage girl who thought bleeding for months was normal.

Grief for the woman who rocked alone waiting for clots the size of hands.

Grief for every ER visit that ended in nothing but shame.

Grief for the years stolen by a condition that could have been treated sooner — if anyone, anyone at all, had listened.

I cried — not from fear of surgery, but from the weight of finally being believed. When I hugged her, it wasn’t gratitude for the solution. It was gratitude for the validation I had been denied my entire life.

🌱 The Shift

That day didn’t cure me.

But it did something more important:

It proved I wasn’t dramatic.

I wasn’t broken.

I wasn’t imagining things.

My pain had always been real.

The system was the lie.

Being believed shouldn’t feel like a miracle, but it did—and it changed everything the moment a doctor finally believed me instead of dismissing me.

And for the first time, the future didn’t look like something I had to endure.

It looked like something I might actually get to live.

This wasn’t the day I got every answer.

It was the day I stopped questioning myself.

It was the day belief replaced blame.

It was the day a door finally opened —and I stepped into the after.

A dark, muddy forest road disappearing into fog, symbolizing the lonely and painful journey of surviving adenomyosis without medical support. — Sometimes the path forward wasn’t clear — but stopping felt more dangerous than continuing.

When Surviving Became Easier Than Asking for Help

December 8, 2025 / Sandi

Part 7 — When Surviving Became Easier Than Seeking Help

For most of my life, pain was the enemy.

Then one day, it wasn’t.

It became the routine.

The predictable.

The part of my life I understood better than my own reflection.

After years of bleeding, medical gaslighting, and procedures that promised relief but delivered trauma, something inside me shifted. Not loudly. Not dramatically.

Quietly.

Like a light that burned out without anyone noticing.

I didn’t stop hurting.

I stopped fighting.

The Slow Erosion of Belief

People imagine giving up as a single moment — a slammed door, a tearful breakdown, a declaration of defeat.

But giving up doesn’t arrive in a burst.

It creeps in through:

The appointment you cancel because you “don’t have the energy”

The symptom you ignore because you’ve explained it a hundred times

The voice in your head whispering, No one will believe you anyway

Giving up wasn’t a choice I made once.

It was a thousand tiny moments where I stopped believing I was worth the trouble.

I wasn’t weak.

I was wounded.

Pain Became Predictable. Hope Didn’t.

My uterus was still a battlefield — but now it was a managed battlefield.

After the ablation failed, the only thing keeping the bleeding at bay was a combination of Nexplanon and progesterone. They didn’t heal anything. They didn’t fix anything. They simply kept the floodgates closed.

My uterus felt heavy, like it was holding its breath — waiting.

I lived with a constant, simmering fear:

If the progesterone ever stopped, my body would unleash hell.

Sometimes insurance took its sweet time approving refills. I’d call the pharmacy, pacing, checking my phone for any missed messages, watching the clock. My pain would ramp up like a warning siren:

Tick.

Tock.

Your uterus is getting ready.

If that pill didn’t arrive soon, I knew what awaited me:

Another ER trip no one would take seriously.

Another round of people shrugging at the trauma inside my body.

When the refill finally got approved — sometimes at the last second — I could almost feel my uterus sigh in relief. The pain would back down, not disappear, but return to my new “normal.”

A normal built out of fear.

A normal where survival wasn’t a life —it was a strategy.

Life Didn’t Stop — I Just Did

From the outside, I probably looked fine.

I laughed.

I worked.

I existed.

But that wasn’t living. That was surviving.

I wasn’t making choices — I was avoiding disaster. My days were dictated by insurance authorizations, pharmacy hours, and dosage schedules. My worth was measured in whether a refill came on time.

I didn’t dare hope for more.

Hope was dangerous.

Hope meant opening the door to more disappointment — another doctor, another dismissal, another scar I didn’t have room for.

Pain was terrible.

But hope hurt worse.

Looking Back Now

I didn’t understand it then, but I was grieving:

The body I should have had

The future I deserved

The belief that doctors help the wounded

Survival wasn’t resilience.

But sometimes surrender isn’t the end.

Sometimes it’s what keeps you alive long enough for the story to change.

I didn’t know it yet — but mine was about to.

A vibrant purple flower burns and transforms into a dried, dead blossom, symbolizing how an endometrial ablation intended to treat adenomyosis caused further damage instead. — It was supposed to heal me. Instead, it burned everything down.

When Endometrial Ablation Makes Pain Worse

December 4, 2025 / Sandi

⭐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.

A woman standing in a hospital hallway looking down with a sad, distant expression, symbolizing pain and medical dismissal. — When your pain is real, but the doctors act like it isn’t.

The Pain No One Took Seriously

November 25, 2025 / Sandi

Trigger warning: medical gaslighting, reproductive pain, procedural trauma

⭐PART 3 — The First Time I Tried to Get Help (And How Everything Got Even Worse)

When I finally told a doctor anything about my bleeding, I was twenty-eight — and honestly, I only did it because I was terrified something inside me was going very, very wrong. I’d spent almost two decades silently bleeding every day and pretending it was normal. My body was screaming, and I had run out of ways to ignore it.

The first gynecologist I saw actually believed me. That alone felt like a miracle.

She diagnosed me with PCOS (which was true), and prescribed birth control. And for the first time in my entire life, my period stopped.

For almost a month, I tasted something I’d never had before: relief.

Hope.

A glimpse of what life might be like if I wasn’t constantly bleeding or bracing against pain.

But then came sugar-pill week… and everything exploded.

The bleeding barreled back like a horror movie scene — heavier, angrier, unstoppable. And once it came back, it refused to stop. Even when I restarted the birth control. Even when I prayed and begged and tried to hold myself together.

That doctor believed me… but she was nearly impossible to get into. So I went to another clinic, hoping for help.

And that’s where everything started to go terribly wrong.

The IUD That Changed Everything

The next gynecologist cared, but she didn’t quite listen. She was dismissive but she did offer what she called a “solution”: an IUD.

She said it would “calm my uterus.”She said it would “help the bleeding.”She said the pain I felt during insertion was “normal.”

But the moment that device went in, I knew — deep in my bones — something was wrong.

Leaving the clinic, I couldn’t walk more than a few steps at a time. It felt like a chainsaw was tearing me apart from the inside. Every few feet I had to stop, grip something, breathe through the agony. I couldn’t stand up straight. I couldn’t sit. I couldn’t move without feeling like my uterus was shredding itself from the inside.

And when I went back to her later (a month later), doubled over in pain, barely able to walk, she brushed me off with the same dismissive tone:

“Spotting is good. That means it’s helping.”

It wasn’t helping. It was destroying me.

I endured that nightmare for 3–4 months before finally going to my primary doctor and begged her to take it out. She listened — gently — and removed it.

I screamed. Not metaphorically. I screamed from the pain of removal while she stopped to soothe me through it.

And the moment it was out? I felt immediate relief.

But still not normal. Not even close.

Unbeknownst to me at the time, that IUD had perforated my uterus. And that damage would haunt me for years.

The Doctor Who Blamed Everything on My Weight

After the IUD ordeal, I ended up in yet another gynecologist’s office, desperate for someone — anyone — to take me seriously.

Instead, she told me everything I’d gone through was because of my weight.

Not the constant bleeding. Not the years of pain. Not the fact that I couldn’t walk upright for months, with that IUD inside me. I still had issues walking for years afterwards.

Just my weight.

And then she said something I’ll never forget:

“If I give you this shot and your period stops, then I’ll believe you.”

As if my suffering needed to be proven to her.

The shot she gave me was known to cause bone loss and tooth deterioration — but I didn’t know that then. I was desperate, scared, and conditioned to believe doctors always know best.

So I agreed.

And everything spiraled.

The bleeding became catastrophic. I made multiple ER trips because I was so pale my mom followed me around the house afraid I would collapse. I was losing blood so rapidly that I nearly needed a transfusion. The pain was unbearable.

And the shot? It damaged my teeth. I’ve lost multiple teeth because of this shot.

Permanent injury — because a doctor wanted to “test” whether my suffering was real.

The ER doctors saw me. They helped me. They were the first to look genuinely worried.

But this gynecologist? She dismissed every single symptom and blamed my weight the entire time.

This was the beginning of the medical gaslighting that would consume the next few years of my life — and it nearly destroyed me long before adenomyosis ever did.

And unbelievably…

The worst was still ahead.

Woman sitting alone on the floor with her head buried in her arms, symbolizing hidden pain and isolation. — Hiding the pain no one could see — and carrying it alone.

The Pain I Carried Alone

November 20, 2025 / Sandi

⭐ PART 2 — The Years I Hid Everything

I look back now and realize just how young I was when everything started. Nine or ten years old — still a kid, still figuring out the world — when I passed a clot big enough to scare me, and then… nothing. No period again until I was about thirteen or fourteen.

And then it didn’t stop.

Most people get a week. I got years.

A day or two off, here and there, like the universe tossing me scraps just to keep me going — but mostly, it was constant. Heavy. Daily. Overwhelming.

And no one knew.

I wore dark clothes because I could bleed through them and no one would notice it. I learned to move carefully, sit carefully, stand carefully. I memorized where every bathroom was at school and timed my path between classes so no one would follow me in. I learned to fold towels in my laundry basket in a way that hid the fact they weren’t for drying off — they were for bleeding on.

I felt disgusting. I felt ashamed. And the hardest part? I didn’t even know why I felt ashamed.

It’s strange how kids can take on blame they were never meant to carry. Part of me thought something was wrong with me. Another part — the one wounded by being molested by my grandfather when I was seven — thought I somehow deserved it. Trauma makes you believe terrible things.

School didn’t help. The one time menstruation was mentioned, a teacher said, “If you lose more than a few tablespoons of blood, something is wrong.”

I sat there thinking, I lose that much just standing up.

But I didn’t say anything. Not because I liked the pain. Not because I wasn’t scared.

I didn’t speak up because silence was safer than shame.

And the pain — back then I thought that was “normal.” I’d pop pain meds like they were candy just to get through the day. It didn’t stop the pain, but it dulled it enough that I could pretend I was like everyone else.

I wasn’t in relationships. I wasn’t dating. I wasn’t doing any of the normal teenager things. I was too busy trying to survive my own body.

By the time I finally told a doctor anything — even the smallest sliver of truth — I was twenty-eight.

That’s almost two decades of bleeding daily. Two decades of hiding. Two decades of thinking no one wanted to know.

But the truth was simpler and sadder than that:

No one asked.

What’s sadder, I’m not sure if I would’ve told the truth if they did ask. In my eyes, being silent and acting like everything was normal, was better than facing the truth, that I was anything but normal.

So I kept surviving quietly, because that’s what I had taught myself to do.

Young woman covering her face in frustration while a calendar overlay symbolizes a period that never ends. — I thought my period would stop. It didn’t — and no one told me that wasn’t normal.

When My Period Never Stopped

November 18, 2025 / Sandi

How a normal beginning became 24 years of silent suffering

⭐Part 1 — When It All Began

I was nine years old when my period first arrived — early, confusing, and nothing like what anyone had prepared me for. At first, it felt like I was joining some mysterious club of “womanhood” long before my friends. But within months, that feeling faded. My period didn’t just come early… it came wrong.

After that first year, it stopped. Completely. No warning, no explanation. And for a while, I thought maybe I was just one of those lucky girls who didn’t have to deal with it. I didn’t understand enough to question it — and I didn’t tell anyone about the change.

But then it started again.

And this time…

It didn’t stop.

Not for a week.

Not for a month.

Not for years.

What began as spotting became bleeding. What became bleeding became my normal. I was still just a kid — too young to know that the word “constant” should never be used with “period.” Too young to understand that something was terribly, unnervingly wrong.

But I did understand something else very clearly: I had to hide it.

So I did.

I hid the pads. I hid the blood. I hid the fear. I hid the fact that my body didn’t feel like other girls’ bodies.

I hid the pain too — although in hindsight, that early pain was nothing compared to the horror that would come later. Back then, it was just… uncomfortable. Scary. Wrong. But not yet the chainsaw agony I would someday learn to associate with my uterus.

At the time, I didn’t know that hiding symptoms is something so many kids do when they don’t understand their own bodies or fear getting in trouble or don’t want to be a burden. No one had ever told me what “normal” was supposed to be — but something inside me whispered that what I was experiencing wasn’t safe to talk about.

So I pretended everything was fine.

I changed pads in secret. I scrubbed blood out of underwear quietly. I learned to move carefully so no one would notice. I became a master at minimizing myself.

And all the while, the bleeding continued. Day after day. Month after month. Year after year.

I grew up thinking this was just my body. This was just how periods worked for me. This was just something I had to manage alone. That I somehow deserved what was happening to me.

I had no idea that this was the beginning of a 24–year nightmare. No idea that this was adenomyosis. No idea that my uterus was already declaring war on me long before I understood what pain really was.

At thirteen years old, I just knew one thing: I was bleeding every day, and I had to keep it a secret.

Everything that came after… I could’ve never imagined.