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Hiding behind a pillow, feeling guilty
The Guilt of Living with Endometriosis

The Guilt of Living with Endometriosis

October 22, 2016 ribbonrx Comments 0 Comment

Why should I feel guilty about something I can’t control? That’s what part of my mind says. But the part that actually controls my feelings completely overrides that. This is in part due to experiences I’ve had that have made me feel guilty, whether the feelings were actually warranted or not.

Individuals with chronic illnesses shouldn’t be made to feel guilty about their conditions. After all, cancer patients aren’t shamed for having cancer, are they? There was nothing they could do to prevent it. In the same way, women with endometriosis shouldn’t be made to feel guilty for having this unpreventable disease.

I was diagnosed with endometriosis two and a half years ago, although my symptoms had actually started fourteen years prior to that time. Even in the relatively short period of time since my diagnosis, through my own personal experiences and time spent in Facebook support groups, I have seen firsthand the guilt that is placed on us…and all due to a disease we cannot control.

We are made to feel guilty for being in pain. When I was diagnosed with endometriosis, my primary care physician (PCP) willingly took charge of my pain management regimen because she knows enough about endometriosis to understand it can be a very painful condition. But then there was a week earlier this year when everything got messed up. For reasons that I still don’t know, my doctor never got the message that I needed a refill on my medication. It took two more days and speaking to three more people to get the message to my physician that I was by this point completely out of pain medication (and I had put the request in early to prevent this). My pain had skyrocketed almost to the point of requiring a visit to the emergency room. Upon talking to a nurse practitioner about the problem, she said that the refill may have been rejected by my physician because pain meds can only be filled every 30 days. *clears throat, throws on white lab coat* Listen lady, if you’re going to make up something, don’t make it up to a practicing pharmacist who knows drug laws better than you do, because that “law” you just told me about does not exist. A fill of a controlled prescription is based on not being permitted to write more than a 30 day supply, so you should be able to do the math and see that my prescription is for a 15 day supply and it has actually been 20 days since my last fill. Get it right. Then, when she realized I had called her out on lying, she said, “Well, some physicians might deny refills to patients displaying addictive behaviors.” My physician has never accused me of such a thing and even supported a trial of long-acting narcotics for several months (and it was her idea) to get the pain under control until it could be fixed surgically, after which I weaned myself off the long-acting narcotic. But I was made to feel like a drug-seeker by a healthcare professional who didn’t know me or my health history whatsoever.

We are made to feel guilty by trying to rest. When you have endometriosis, your life changes. You can’t do what you used to be able to do in some cases. In my case, being able to work through my symptoms became a challenge fairly quickly. When my endometriosis was at its worst two years ago prior to my excision surgery, I was practically bedridden. If I wasn’t at work, I was at home in bed, curled up with my heating pad. Strangely enough, if I was at work, I was also curled up on a chair…with my heating pad. But things were certainly quite challenging at home. Due to the timing of life events, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law were living with my husband and me for the summer. I felt bad, because I could have been spending time getting to know them both better, but I just couldn’t get out of bed for anything except needing to go to the bathroom or needing to go to work.

We are made to feel guilty when we deny intimacy. I will start by saying that my wonderful husband has never, ever pressured me into sex and would immediately stop in concern if it was too painful for me. But the first four years of our marriage were severely lacking in intimacy due to the endometriosis (which we didn’t know about at the time.) I felt like a horrible wife for not being able to perform this act of love with the man I love. My husband has never been unfaithful, but there are many relationships out there broken by the fact that women with endometriosis are often too uncomfortable or downright in pain while being intimate with her partner.

But then women with endometriosis are often made to feel guilty for other reasons, too. One thing a lot of people have difficulty comprehending about chronic illness is that it is, in fact, chronic. Which means it isn’t going to go away. We’re not going to “get well soon.” When we hear such questions as “Aren’t you better yet?”, it makes us feel guilty for not being better, even though there’s not necessarily anything we can do about getting better. I’ve done all I can for myself. I have celiac disease, so I’m on a gluten free diet, but I will always have celiac disease. I have endometriosis, so I’ve had excision surgery by one of the best excisionists in the world, which is the gold standard of therapy for the disease. But there is no cure; there’s always a chance it could come back. I have adenomyosis, which can only be cured by a hysterectomy, which I will have once I’m done having children, if I’m ever able to have children. But I have to deal with the daily pain until then. So when I hear questions like “Why aren’t you better yet?”, it makes me feel like I’m doing something wrong and that I should be ashamed of myself for still being sick.

If you know anyone with endometriosis (and since it occurs in 1 out of 10 women, you probably do), take a moment to try and understand what it’s really like to be in their shoes. Talk to them about it. And understand that, while excision surgery may help, all of the pain from the disease doesn’t necessarily go away after the fact. It might, but not always. We’re in this fight for life. And it’s helpful to have understanding people by our sides. Will you be that understanding person today?

?ribbonrx

PS- I have recently upgraded my blog to a self-hosted WordPress.org site. If you follow me through the WordPress.com Reader, in order to keep following my posts, you need to subscribe to my self-hosted blog via e-mail (see the sidebar on my new blog.) You will only receive an e-mail when I publish a post. Please make my day and sign up! ??

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0 thoughts on “The Guilt of Living with Endometriosis”

  1. trippingthroughtreacle says:
    October 22, 2016 at 5:12 pm

    Great post; I definitely feel the guilt, especially in regards to my relationships with my husband and children. I wish that I can be the person they want me to be (me, before my chronic illness) but I also feel frustrated that I feel guilty in the first place when it isn’t my fault! It helps me to hear others feel the same x

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    1. ribbonrx says:
      October 22, 2016 at 6:30 pm

      Thank you! It’s so hard the toll our illnesses take on our relationships. I can only imagine what that’s like with MS. But we’re all in this together, no matter our illness! ?

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  2. Kym G says:
    October 24, 2016 at 11:14 pm

    Thank you this post. I’ve been battling endometriosis for awhile now with 3 surgeries this year alone. I’ve been told by one doctor I wasn’t crazy we know you have this. Only to urn around and be told that I’m manifesting my pain through depression. I’m depressed because my life has been turned upside down. It’s a horrible process to go through. It’s nice to know there are sisters out there who understand.

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  3. bandnamdcharlie says:
    November 13, 2016 at 12:59 am

    Great post. I am going through a resurgence of my once, relatively under-control endo pain and am now nearly bedridden and in constant pain. I am recently married (September of this year) and he is also very supportive, but it doesn’t keep me from feeling guilty when I make us stay in instead of going out on the weekend, or having to cancel plans due to pain or fatigue from the pain.
    Being made to feel guilty be physicians is the WORST… we cannot help that we need to function normally – we are not drug seekers. Your post hit the nail on the head and said everything I’ve been trying to say in mine 🙂 I’ll be sure to stop by again soon <3 Prayers for comfort!

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    1. ribbonrx says:
      November 13, 2016 at 1:28 am

      Thank you for your kind words! I’m glad the post resonated with you. I’ve definitely been in your shoes in my early endo days two years ago (check out “You have what in your where?” and the subsequent posts in my July archive on the main page.) Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you start to feel better soon!?

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  4. Pingback: Top Posts of 2016: Endo and Tumors and Aneurysms, oh my! – ribbonrx
  5. Rosalina says:
    January 15, 2017 at 9:17 pm

    This is a very brave post, and I think it fact will relieve some women of their shame and guilt. Brava!

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  6. kippinsbeautyblog says:
    February 22, 2017 at 2:20 pm

    Great post. I’ve just been diagnosed and in a way it’s a relief that all that I’ve been feeling wasn’t ‘normal’ . That I wasn’t lazy but genuinely exhausted. I always felt guilty for phoning in sick to work with uti’s (which turns out is related) or going home with blinding headaches. Colleagues joke about being out sick again thinking I just couldn’t be arsed getting up and going to work like the rest of them.
    I’m so SO lucky that even before diagnosis my hubby was so understanding about me not being in “the mood”.

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  7. Pingback: The Versatile Blogger Award – The Mumbler
  8. Pip says:
    August 6, 2017 at 10:22 pm

    Good article but I don’t really agree with abusing a nurse because it’s more than likely they have been told incorrect info themselves.

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    1. ribbonrx says:
      August 6, 2017 at 10:38 pm

      I understand what you’re saying. And believe me, working in a hospital, I have the utmost respect for nurses who do their jobs correctly. If the nurse had said that she had been told something different, I would have corrected her anyway because I wouldn’t want her to accidentally deny patients medications they might need based on a nonexistent law. But when that nurse, instead of apologizing and recognizing that perhaps she was mistaken about the law when I called her out on it, instead stooped to the level of accusing me of being a drug seeker, THAT rubbed me the wrong way. Nothing could be more unprofessional than what she did. Working in a profession that is bound by many laws, you need to know the laws that affect the way you practice, otherwise licenses can be lost.

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