Alli's Endometriosis Symptoms Experience

Shownotes: Endometriosis Symptoms - Join me as I speak with Alli Leech about her 25-year struggle with endometriosis.  she will give you a guide to the symptoms, signs and treatment of endometriosis.  175 million around the world suffer from endometriosis.  You can check out previous podcasts around uterine fibroids treatment. Alvern: Hello ladies, Alvern here. Today we have a special show on where we'll be looking at all things endometriosis. And to do that, I have a special guest on myself. Her name is Alli and I'm just gonna let Alli introduce herself. Over to you Alli. Alli: Hi ladies. Thank you Alvern, Hi ladies, my name is Allie and I'm delighted to be part of this discussion in relation to endometriosis. I hope you find it useful and I am ready for all questions. Thanks, Alvern. Alvern: Brilliant. You're very welcome. Before we get into it, there would be some people on here who wouldn't know anything about that very big long word that you just call, so I'll let you start off by defining or giving your definition of what endometriosis is all about. Alli: Okay, so endometriosis is basically where the lining of your womb grows outside of the womb on different organs around your body. In my case, it is attached to the back of my womb and to my intestines and my stomach. I also have some down towards my hips. It is basically the lining of the womb. Doctors still don't know why, but it grows in these places and can cause a various amount of symptoms that can be quite debilitating. That's essentially what endometriosis is and every month it sheds the same way as the lining of your womb when you have your period and that can be a particularly difficult time for women who have this disease. Alvern: Perfect. All right, that actually sounds quite scary. I know a lot of women suffer from it around the world. Some of them don't even know they have it. So this leads me to the very next question. When did you realise you had it? Alli: I realised I had it, I was fortunate enough to be finally referred to a South African doctor called Dr. Kroon and before that, it had been 11 years of me trying to find out what these symptoms meant and I had been told by several different doctors, most of the Irish and that's important later on, it's just not particularly well-known in Ireland or studied by general practitioners. But, it was 11 years of me being told by different doctors that I had irritable bowel syndrome. That I suffered from Dysmenorrhea, which is painful periods and other doctors actually used the term, "ghost pains", which was almost suggesting that I was making it up. I knew myself that it's not normal, every month, to vomit with your periods. To get diarrhoea, bloating, constipation sometimes and vicious headaches. I knew, deep down, it wasn't irritable bowel syndrome, there was something more serious going on. It was only when I tried for a baby and after I was married for two years, so I was trying with my husband for two years to become pregnant and it was ... we had no success. I had never fallen pregnant so I went to get a referral to this very, very highly educated lady who was very focused on endometriosis symptoms and fertility issues. She knew, the minute I told her my symptoms what was wrong. Alvern: Perfect, wow. That is amazing. Then in terms of ... because you know this podcast I always try to help women ... Okay, there's other things that you get [inaudible 00:04:19] work like doing the right things with different skills and stuff like that but this, as far as I'm aware because I think one of my sisters actually suffers from this same problem or issue, it affects not only your everyday life but your work as well as, if you go to college,