It Took 15 Years and Dozens of Doctors to Find the Cause of My Pain

The useful part

When you're young, you don't really know how your period compares to anyone else's. The really intense pain started after I had my appendix removed when I was 17 weeks pregnant with my first son, Eddie. About a year later, I started telling doctors that something was wrong with my stomach.

How it works

• An MRI showed a surgical clip in my abdomen and tissue connecting my uterus, bladder and abdominal wall.
• I couldn't do a cobra pose or lean backward without feeling like my stomach was being pulled apart.
• I had laparoscopic surgery to investigate, but afterward the doctor told me the MRI had been wrong.
• Meanwhile, I was living with terrible IBS-like symptoms, bloating and excruciating pain.
• I went through test after test and saw specialist after specialist, but I still didn't have an explanation that accounted for everything I was exper...

Details worth keeping

So when people said, "Oh, it's just your period," I believed them. Every 28 days, the pain would come, and I learned to compartmentalize it. I also had a difficult C-section when he was born.