Endometriosis Can Kill!: A Doctor’s Lie

Endometriosis, medically speaking, is a benign form of cancer which attacks the uterus and female reproductive organs. When diagnosed with Endometriosis, many patients are told the condition is painful, but not life threatening. What if that was all a lie?

While endometriosis, when isolated in reproductive organs, is not life threatening, what happens when this silent killer moves outside of the its “normal” realm? Endometriosis is not always a confined illness. When endometriosis moves out of the uterus and other reproductive organs, things can turn deadly.

I learned of external endometriosis by accident. After losing 50 lbs, I found a lump on my abdomen. The lump was diagnosed as a hernia and later confirmed to be so through the use of a cat scan. The surgeon later found a large mass, the size of two golf balls, that was surely no hernia. It was an endometrial cyst and it was not attached to any female organ.

After diagnosis, I was told this form of endometriosis could pop up anywhere in the body. The heart, lungs, and brain were all fair game for my form of endometriosis. Small pieces of endometrial tissue could travel through the blood stream and set up house wherever it wanted. With regular cat scans, I could survive with my uterus in tact and still birth additional children. At least that is what the doctors thought.

Years passed and I became pregnant and gave birth to twins. Life seemed fantastic. But, on the twin’s one year birthday, I started feeling pains in my abdomen on the opposite side of the previous surgery. I continued to get cat scans and nothing showed up. I finally decided to have a hysterectomy to solve the endometriosis problem that had grown into a horribly painful condition with constant bleeding. The hysterectomy saved my life.

My external endometriosis had grown again on my abdominal wall. The cat scans showed nothing and I was told by my doctors that the pain was just a part of me. The doctors were wrong.

After surgery, I was visited by my doctor, who walked in to the room looking as if he had just seen a ghost. The test results on my reproductive organs and some scar tissue, that the cat scan said was never there, had been returned and the results were not good. My uterus, fallopian tubes and ovaries were all eaten away with adenomyosis (endometriosis of the muscle) and endometriosis. But, the biggest shock came from the “scar tissue”.

When the doctor removed the large lump of scar tissue, he was sure it was nothing. He actually thought he was just doing me a favor in case the scarring was causing some of the pain I had reported. The test results proved this was no normal scar tissue. The lump was a large endometrial mass with its own blood supply. This living form of endometriosis was totally self sufficient and producing its own estrogen to enhance growth. The mass showed evidence of internal hemorrhage more than one time. The cat scans were wrong and this endometrial cyst could have taken my life.

Endometriosis is a deadly benign cancer. Women should know the facts about endometriosis, regardless of what the doctors tell you. Endometriosis and endometrial cells can and will move through the blood stream and infect various parts of the body. The endometrial cells can embed in muscle tissue, heart tissue, lung tissue and brain tissue. Endometriosis is a deadly condition and it can and will kill!