Angry Meatwad

Alright, so: medical definition of endometriosis. 

Endometrium is the lining of the uterus, the stuff women slough off during their periods. In endometriosis, that lining grows on the outside of the uterus instead of the inside. I know, it's crazy! In Stage I endo, a little bit of lining grows outside the uterus, being all badass and like "I'm not going to play by your rules, uterus. You don't control me!" The severity progresses along to Stage IV, where the lining grows all over the place, and you get lesions and adhesions (where the growths sort of glue organs and tissue together), and big endometrioma (cysts) that grow on the ovaries and wherever else they want.

One of the weird things about endometriosis is that the staging of the disease does not correlate to pain experienced. A woman with Stage I could have really horrible pain and bleeding all the time, whereas other women (like me) have Stage IV but not much pain. Until recently, I hardly had any pain at all, even with such severe endo and having one ovary taken out due to endometrioma (word of the day: ovary removal has the incredibly fun title of 'oophorectomy'!)

Dan Savage once wrote a column where he imagined tiny gnomes stomping on barrels of champagne grapes  as the origin of vaginal secretions. I've always liked that image. In the same way, I always imagine my endomees as puffy pink, vaguely hostile blobs, sort of like a Pepto-Bismol colored Meatwad.  

If you don't watch Aqua Teen Hunger Force, well, you should. Go watch it now.

Endo is unusually mysterious given that it affects an estimated 40-60% of women with painful periods. No one really knows why it happens or why some women have pain when others don't. There's no cure for endo, but it's not fatal either. So that's something.

Since I'm not worried about fertility, more treatment options are open to me. I'll talk about my current crazy treatment in my next post.