Erica Hoke shares her 15-year endometriosis journey and five practical steps if you suspect you have it. She warns against masking severe pain with painkillers and recommends laparoscopic surgery for diagnosis, plus excision surgery for treatment. Her main point: prioritize your quality of life, not just fertility concerns.
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me today. Thanks for being on here with me today. I wanted to talk to you about, um, your— what to do if you think that you have endometriosis. What to do if you think that you have endometriosis. So I'm going to give you some, some action steps, but first I want to tell you a little, uh, story. Can you imagine, uh, being 18 years old, working retail, and having so much bloating, um, during your cycle that people— remember, 100 pounds, I'm 5'6", I was super tiny— people would ask me on a regular basis if I was pregnant. It was devastating to me as a young woman, and that was one of my endometriosis symptoms, and I didn't know it at the time. So I lived with endometriosis for 15 years before I got, an accurate diagnosis and I got surgery. So, um, if you, if you have endometriosis, women that have endometriosis describe it as feeling like barbed wire wrapped around your reproductive organs and being pulled. It's so debilitating. The pain is so debilitating that, uh, a lot of women will vomit on the first day or second, first couple days of their cycle. Or they will not be able to get out of bed. They're not able to perform their daily activities, or if they do, like myself, I worked 2 jobs and went to school full-time, and I didn't have that option, and I took handfuls, I mean handfuls of Aleve and Tylenol and things like that. So, um, that was just causing all kinds of other problems for me, which we'll talk about in a minute. But I want to tell you my top tips today for, um, action steps if you think, if you suspect you have endometriosis. And that's like a big key word, right? Because a lot of women like myself are just, um, covering up the symptoms. Um, so my dos today are actually don'ts. So the first don't is don't cover up your symptoms. If you were having to manage your pain by taking handfuls of pain reliever and anti-inflammatories around the clock just to get by, that is not doing you any favors. That's all processed through your liver and your kidneys, and that has all kinds of other hormone implications that actually might be making things worse for you in the long run. So if the pain is that bad, uh, my first do is don't take handfuls of over-the-counter medication. Uh, the other thing that I went years, years not understanding is that the doctor could not— was not allowed to diagnose me without surgery. They could only tell me that they sus— affected endometriosis. And it was very confusing to me for a long time, um, until I realized they couldn't tell me— they weren't allowed to tell me, um, whether or not I had endometriosis without a laparoscopic surgery. Now there is a blood test that will tell you— it's indicative of whether or not you have endometriosis or not. So that's kind of something that you could do ahead of time. If you suspect that you have endometriosis— excuse me, um, if you suspect you have endometriosis and you're afraid of the surgery, you can do the blood test first and, uh, see if it's indicative. Otherwise, you want to go ahead and schedule that laparoscopic surgery so that you know for sure whether or not you have it, um, because then, you know, you can talk about excision surgery to remove it and that sort of thing. I was so afraid that I was going to hurt my fertility chances additionally if I had the laparoscopic surgery and if I had the excision surgery, but it got to the point where it was so bad that I couldn't function, so I really didn't have any choice. So, uh, Don't take handfuls of medicine. Don't wait for a diagnosis and don't wait for your surgery. Okay. So go ahead and, uh, if you're having period pain that is so debilitating, get the laparoscopic surgery because, um, the end goal is overall health and outcome is pregnancy. You want a good quality of life while you're going through, um, you know, your infertility journey and things like that. I dropped the other 2 points, um, for points 4 and 5 on my blog. You can find that at ericahoke.com. And, uh, if you are, uh, if you are questioning whether this is a thing for you or not, a couple of things that I learned about the whole process is that nobody knows your body better than you do. And the infertility journey is actually full of a lot of what ifs and risks. So I spent a lot of time questioning, is this the right thing to do, instead of taking action, um, for years thinking that I was going to be hurting my chances. And I suffered needlessly. So I would tell you that your quality of life is important too, as well as getting a baby. And in my case, I was able to have a very, very aggressive stage 4 excision surgery And as you see, everything worked out for me. So talk to your doctor about that. And health and blessings to you guys. I will see you next time. And watch for that link in the comments for the blog. Bye-bye.
