MKR's Lauren on her very personal health battle.

It’s Endometriosis Awareness Month and we need to end the silence, I’m one of the 1 in 10 women that suffer from this disease.

I suffered in silence for years…. knowing that something just wasn’t quite right but just continued on with life. I just accepted that my heavy periods, severe pain and fainting was just the norm for me when it was that time of the month.

Lucky for me it’s usually only every second month where the pain was unbearable – when it’s lefty’s turn. Yep, I’m a lefty – so when it’s lefty’s month, I would feel like I had Satan inside of me stabbing me with his pitchfork.

As the years went on, the gushing became heavier and the pain became more and more intense. The bloating and swelling became more and more noticeable and the dizzy spells and fainting became more frequent. It wasn’t until I had been wheeled out of my new workplace (in the CBD) on an ambulance bed during the lunch rush, that I realised that, shit just got real and I had to do something about it…ASAP!

I went back to my doctor and spoke about my very embarrassing symptoms in more depth and after having ultrasound after ultrasound (you know the ones I mean!), she was convinced I had endometriosis. So off I went to a specialist who recommended a laparoscopy and booked me in for surgery in November 2014.

I was so scared, but knew it had to happen. I’m lucky enough to have the most supportive husband who read through every info sheet and detail about my laparoscopy – (he’s a details man) and he made sure I knew exactly what I was up for.

Mia Freedman at Shared Perspectives EndoActive Conference 2015 (post continues after video)

The day of my surgery came around really quickly and I was pretty scared, but what scared my even more was that the enema didn’t work! So here I am moments away from being put under more worried that I’m going to poo myself during the surgery!!!

I’m going under….and I’m gone! The next thing I remember is waking up in recovery and freaking out with all these tubes attached to me in all the worst places! Wow, three incisions (I call them my battle scars). According to my specialist, I was riddled! It was everywhere! I couldn’t help but want to kick myself in the head, because I should’ve got it sorted sooner.

The good news was that nothing was cancerous and my eggs were tested for fertility and everything was good to go for baby-making…. But then came along the MKR train….

For us, it was such an exciting time making it on to MKR, but at the same time, we had to make a huge sacrifice and delay our dream of starting a family. Although my painful periods have reduced, there is still the psychological battle of knowing that every day we are part of MKR, is one more day where my endometriosis could be growing back and making it harder and harder to conceive.

The scary thing about it all is that we don’t know how hard it will be for us, until we try…. We can only hope that our MKR journey brings us the opportunities to change our careers so that we can start trying for babies in the near future and happily say, that it was all worth it!

It’s Endometriosis Awareness month. For more information visit:  www.endometriosisaustralia.org