Womb Service

Endometriosis 101

Endometriosis

Tissue similar to the lining of the uterus growing outside the uterus, where it has no business being. There is currently more funding for male pattern baldness research than there is for endometriosis.

What it is

  • Tissue similar to the uterine lining grows outside the uterus — on the ovaries, the bowel, the bladder, the ligaments that hold the uterus up, or the lining of the pelvis.
  • It behaves a bit like the uterine lining: it thickens and bleeds with each cycle. Except that blood has nowhere to go, so it irritates everything around it.
  • Over years that irritation turns into inflammation, scar tissue and adhesions — bands of fibrous tissue that can glue organs together and pull things out of place.

How common it is

  • Roughly 1 in 10 people with a uterus — around 190 million people worldwide. That is not rare.
  • The average wait from first symptoms to a diagnosis is 7 to 10 years, mostly because severe period pain gets brushed off as normal for years.
  • It can start at the very first period, and it doesn't automatically disappear at menopause.

What it feels like

  • Period pain that puts you on the floor — not the kind you take a tablet for and carry on.
  • Pain with ovulation, with sex, or with bowel movements and urination, especially around your period.
  • Constant pelvic, lower back or down-the-leg pain, plus bloating that can make you look months along by dinnertime ("endo belly").
  • Heavy or irregular bleeding, nausea, and an exhaustion that sleep doesn't fix.

How it's diagnosed

  • The gold standard is keyhole (laparoscopic) surgery, where the tissue is removed and looked at in a lab. That's the operation happening on 10/6.

Adenomyosis

The same kind of lining tissue growing into the muscular wall of the uterus itself, instead of staying on the surface. Jean has both!

So what's happening on 10/6?

  • Excision of endometriosis — the disease is cut out rather than burned, and the tissue goes to a lab.
  • A bilateral salpingectomy — both fallopian tubes are being removed at the same time.
  • It's abdominal surgery performed with a surgical robot, which is why recovery is measured in weeks and not days.
  • Which is the whole reason this page exists: six weeks of someone else walking the dog so Matt can sleep.

If you want to read more

Still the best way to help is the walk calendar — take Ellie for a Saturday.