My Endo Journey - Pt 1

Around 14 I started having lower back pain. It started like a thumb pressing on my spine randomly but by the time I entered high school it was constant and felt like a rod being pressed into my back. Within a few months it felt like a knife permanently lodged in my spine.

I'll never forget my Spanish teacher, Senior Robinson during this time. His class was at the end of the day and by that time I was in so much pain from sitting all day that I could barely hold back the tears. He saw my pain and simply told me to stand if I needed to. He never asked what was wrong. He told me I owe no one an explanation. And so I would walk to the back of the room and stand for his class. I'm sure the other kids wondered but he empowered me that day to not be concerned with the bullshit, to do what was right for me.

My parents took me to every type of doctor imaginable. At one point I counted 9 different dr appts in a week that year. An MRI revealed a mass on my ovary. Surgery was scheduled for a week after school ended. I went under without knowing if I would have a tiny incision or a 10" scar across my abdomen.

I woke up and the relief I felt was immediate. The knife was gone. It wasn't cancer. But I was handed a life sentence of chronic pain and fertility struggles. At 15 they found endometriosis - a disease no one in my family had ever heard of. 

My mom was on it. She researched and found specialists with the most progressive treatments. One was continuous birth control. My father had to write a letter to the insurance company requesting they cover such "extreme measures". The doctor couldn't do it. I could not do it. It was approved. But every year we had to go thru the same process not knowing if the medicine I needed to live a normal teenage life would be approved or not. It was out of our hands.

That treatment - that medicine that was intended for something else, saved my life. It kept the disease at bay for 5 years. It gave me 5 years of freedom from pain to be a normal teenager. And I truly believe full heartedly that without it; my children would not exist today. 

Overturning wade vs roe not only affects those needing/wanting an abortion. It protects women from government control over their healthcare.

My parents would've paid for the medicine regardless if insurance did or not. They taught me what advocating for womens healthcare looked like, but even they couldn't have fought the government on it. 

In a month this decision won't be about whether treatment is covered by insurance (which is another whole issue). The government will have control over whether I would've been able to even receive the medicine that (despite its intentions) was the only thing we had to fight this disease. At 15. Scared. Wanting to be able to dance. Wanting children one day. Wanting to live painfree. 

Overturning this decision gives the government control over ALL WOMENS healthcare regardless if it's reproductive issues, or cancer, or whatever. It means that women will have no privacy or control over the treatments available. 

With daughters on the cusp of puberty, I am terrified that even with my knowledge and willingness to advocate for them; I will not be able to get them the treatment they need. Medicine to keep them painfree, or allow them the possibility of children one day. 

Had the government been in control when I was 15 - it wouldn't have mattered how much my parents were willing to spend, it would have been denied. They still do not recognize birth control as medicinal.

I owe my parents everything for their relentless fight for my rights. I owe my grandmother for fighting for that right they exercised, and I owe the kindness of virtual strangers who taught me in one moment that privacy in healthcare is essential. 

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#StandWithHer #womensrightsarehumanrights #RoeVsWade #womensrights #proroe