The rule is that it doesn’t hurt

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My mother’s deepest fear when I reached pre-teens was that I would have painful periods. “I hope she doesn’t have them like everyone else in the family,” she would say in a pleading tone. I never really understood what she meant because I never witnessed the torture she went through for thirty years every month since she had her first period. My parents adopted me in 1994, after multiple failed attempts at conception. in vitro. A year earlier, in 1993, my mother had undergone a hysterectomy, the excision of hysteria: the most unfair and stupid name for a surgery where the uterus, ovaries and fallopian tubes are removed for therapeutic purposes: among them, to eliminate the pains that came every month and incapacitated her for almost a week. For this reason, I do not remember seeing my mother suffer from her period. When I was a few months away from turning 12, in 2006, I had menarche, the first period of my life and, apparently, my mother’s pleas had an effect because beyond surprise and confusion, I felt nothing else.

Growing up, what I heard at school and at home was that period pain was a kind of lottery: some people got to suffer and others didn’t. That was how our bodies were and it was normal. The only thing we lucky women who suffered pain could feel was pity. However, when I spoke to my mother, aunts or cousins, I understood that it wasn’t a question of bad luck, but that they suffered from certain syndromes or diseases: ovarian cysts, fibroids or a disease that no woman in my family had ever heard of and that they probably suffer from: endometriosis. The Nuffield Department of Reproductive and Women’s Health at Oxford University defines it as “a medical condition in which cells, such as those that line the uterus (endometrium), are found in other parts of the body (such as the fallopian tubes, intestines or abdominal wall).” The endometrium is the tissue that is destroyed every month, when there is no fertilization, and leaves our body in the form of menstruation. However, when the cells of this tissue are implanted in other organs and are not reabsorbed, they are also activated during menstruation, generating heavy bleeding, inflammation and pain in these organs, generally in the pelvis and abdomen.

The symptoms of endometriosis are varied and each case is different. However, the most common are menstrual cramps from mild to disabling for days, during the period or at any time of the cycle, heavy bleeding, pain during sexual intercourse, gastrointestinal symptoms such as diarrhea or constipation, inflammation or difficulty getting pregnant, among others. The variety of symptoms has contributed to this disease, as common as diabetes, which affects one in ten women in the world, being confused with irritable bowel syndrome, polycystic ovary syndrome or even hypochondria, related to some sleep disorder. anxiety or mental health. In fact, many women go years without hearing about the disease or without knowing that they suffer from it because the myth in society and even among some health professionals is that pelvic pain is normal and that women should endure it. In my case, the diagnosis took almost five years. If we talk again in terms of luck or lottery, I was luckier than others. According to data from the Spanish Ministry of Health, diagnosis takes between seven and eight years.

My adolescence and adulthood in terms of menstruation were calm. I only remember three episodes from the age of 12 to 24 in which I felt cramps. The first in 2007, when I had pain for almost 12 hours, which did not calm down even with a hot water bottle, acetaminophen or cinnamon infusion, but it went away as quickly as it appeared. Another, that same year at 6:30 in the morning, which calmed down after the school nurse gave me an ibuprofen. Finally, another in 2015, when I went to visit my family in Cartagena de Indias. It also went away in a matter of minutes with ibuprofen. By 2018, at 24 years old, I noticed that the cramps were no longer sporadic, once every so often, or years, but that one month the left side of my pelvis hurt a lot and the next it didn’t. The pain never incapacitated me and it would go away as soon as I took ibuprofen, but something inside me told me it wasn’t normal. It’s not normal for menstruation to hurt, periods should not hurt. Between 2018 and 2023, I consulted 12 different gynecologists in Colombia and Canada (where I did my postgraduate studies) who sent me transvaginal ultrasounds, routine checkups, and told me that I didn’t suffer from anything. I just had to keep taking ibuprofen when the pain appeared and take oral contraceptives to reduce heavy bleeding during the first days of my period. The times they mentioned endometriosis, it was to tell me to stay calm, that I didn’t suffer from that.

Over the years, the pain increased and between 2022 and 2023 I was in the emergency room three times for pain in the left ovary on the first day of my period, I went through suspected ovarian torsion, ectopic pregnancy, cysts in the ovaries, but in the end they gave me an injection a painkiller and they sent me home. By then, I already knew about endometriosis because working in a feminist environment in Colombia, Media ManifestI decided to cover the topic of menstrual health. I knew that the symptoms I was experiencing: mild to moderate menstrual cramps and heavy bleeding and a diagnosis of irritable bowel syndrome since I was 19 could indicate some degree of endometriosis.

At the end of 2023, I turned to a fertility expert gynecologist who was the first to tell me that the cramps were not normal. She sent me for a hormonal blood test and other tests, saw that I had a hormonal disorder, and put me on a treatment that did not consist of oral contraceptives, which had completely taken away my sexual desire. Although this treatment is hormonal, it improved my experience by 80% each month. However, the pain did not completely disappear in the left ovary and another pain was added: mild pain during sexual intercourse. This set off alarm bells for me and for the gynecologist who sent me for an ultrasound to detect deep endometriosis. The result: mild endometriosis in the left ovary that is attached to the uterus and a small, almost invisible endometriosis lesion in the colon. Again, my mother thanks heaven because in the midst of everything “it did not affect me like the women in the family,” and she is right. I belong to another generation that is no longer offered a single solution: hysterectomy at 40 years of age. I came from a generation of doctors who at least name the disease, a time when diagnosis is no longer only made by laparoscopy – an outpatient surgery – but there is specialized mapping. However, I hope that future generations will have health professionals who do not underestimate pelvic pain, where there are more solutions and not just hormonal contraceptive treatments to stop the progression of the disease. I hope that science will pay the debt it owes to the bodies of women and people who menstruate, that in a few years there will be an understanding of endometriosis and hopefully a cure or treatments that do not compromise our quality of life.

In my case I felt relief to know that my pain was not a product of my imagination, to know that I was right and that the pain, although not disabling, w
as not normal, but I also felt sadness about the diagnosis, I don’t want to suffer this. No woman wants. Now I am waiting to see the gynecologist again to find out if the laparoscopy is necessary and to know when I should put in the Mirena IUD, one of the few treatments that the market offers for the symptoms, whose insertion is extremely painful, but another issue would arise from that topic. opinion column.

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