I have endometriosis, PCOS and ovary tortion

 Hello, hi.

I'm extremely depressed. But I have to keep going. 

Two weeks ago, I was diagnosed with Endometriosis and ovary tortion. A week before, I was diagnosed with PCOS. And now, my pain increases every day. I don't realy understand what exactly is going on inside my body at the moment, but I sure as fuck don't like it. At the same time that I have symptoms of menopause (I'm not joking), I also have weird hormonal symptoms. Some days, I feel normal and some days I feel like I was hit by a truck.

The thing is that isn't a new feeling for me. Before I started taking sertraline, I also had these symptoms. They would make me extremely tired for a week, and then the next three days were happy and productive (probably an uptick in estrogen and dopamine). I never noticed that my big lower belly was more than a genetic tendency either. I thought I was just fat and lazy and depressed. Nothing more to it.

Eventually I took the depression, anxiety, autism and trauma more seriously and now I take SSRIs, have weekly therapy sessions and go to the gym. I also take melatonin to help with sleep, and I meditate. As you can see, I'm anything but a lazy motherfucker. 

Lately, the third factor has been weighing on me more than ever (no pun intended). My weight has always been high, but especially when I hit the 14 years old mark. It got incredibly hard to lose any weight and I had anorexic flair-ups, that destroyed my mental health further. Not only that, the path to healing from my anorexic (and orthorexic) tendencies have triggered the PCOS and consequently the endometriosis and ovary torsion.

It saddens me to think that the only way for me to survive my own uterus without medical intervention and according to my own biology is to not eat enough and have babies as soon as possible. Then I would probably die earlier than normal (30s maybe) and I'd have kids. Which, to biology is good enough. And to me, it's the biggest nightmare I could have ever conceived. 

But I do have food around me, sexual education, the internet, and above all, modern medicine. Thank you, modern medicine. It is tuesday now, and two days from now, I will have an appointment with a ginecological surgeon to hopefully take my womb, ovaries and the endometriosis out.

The problem is that a hysterectomy is worse than a C-section.

It takes about 12 months for your organs to spread and occupy the new free space, plus, the pain caused by the surgery can be chronic, due to a new amount of hormones and surgical complications. Believe it or not, having enough hormones in your body right after the surgery prevents pain. 

I've seen the difference between young trans men, young cis women and old cis women. It was a little shocking to me that old women didn't have as many pain issues as young women. Probably because their wombs were already post menopausal and a little bit atrophied, but also because the hormones were not as affected by the surgery (they already had low estrogen to begin with). But I think what surprised me even more was that young trans men felt amazing afterwards. Many of them were able to get back to the gym 3 weeks after the surgery, with barely any pain. Y'know the atrophy? That was probably it. Plus, not only they had enough hormones (testosterone) but they also had a habit of taking said testosterone before the surgery, which probably alliviated the body with the hormonal changes post-surgery.

Apparently, it's rare for a person to have both. PCOS usually means high testosterone, Endo usually means high estrogen. PCOS means not having periods, Endo means having a lot of them. PCOS women are usually fat. Endometriosis women are usually skinny. So yeah, I'm being pulled apart by my hormones and  I don't like it. Mind you, I have had milder versions of these symptoms my whole "fertile" life (or non-fertile, since we're talking about two disorders that cause infertility). I got my period later than my mom did. Which is not common, especially for my generation. I was chubby and the prediction was that I'd have an early menarca. It didn't happen, though. Plus, I had boobs at 9, when most girls didn't have them. My boobs grew extremely slowly from that on, while girls were growing bazonkas at 11. I never had big boobs. While the girls where having their menarcas at 11, when two years later they had no hips and no boobs, I was rocking the same ol' body I had since I was 9. It felt confusing, and I remember looking at these girls boobs like "how did that grow so fast?". I always had an easy time getting muscle, but also an easy time getting fat. One day, I felt like I was on top of the world, the other I was a crying baby. One day, I was non-inflammed, "skinny", happy and the next day, I had a humongous pimple on my butt, my period was late, and I couldn't look at my belly because it was so much bigger than yesterday. 

I honestly feel like the depersonalization symptoms went off after puberty, because I had a new body every day. At that point, I had no pain tho. I didn't notice much either. I wanted to feel normal, but my mood was a problem. I got angry a lot, I felt more masculine. I felt confused a lot of the time. 

At 17, when I started masturbating (late bloomer? most women don't even do it so idk), I noticed that there was a part of my canal that I couldn't feel, like the deeper right part of my canal. Although it was noticeable, I couldn1t care less. I had bigger fish to fry with my lost mormonism faith, lesbianism, mood swings, depression, anxiety, autism, trauma, etc.

Now, at 23, after having solved the great majority of these, or at least learning how to manage them, I now have a new perspective on those same exact issues. Hormones were off. People with PCOS have 3 times more chances of developing anxiety. My body changed every single day, growing and shrinking, creating body issues. Testosterone and progesterone swings were probably making me angry as fuck. And my masculinity that I felt only happened because I had "become a lesbian" was caused by the high T levels. It's honestly so unfair lmao.

Not just that, I have always been a low-energy person, even as a child. But when puberty began to beat the shit out of me at like 9-11, I started getting so tired, I couldn't function much. Kids were still playing a lot at that age, but I didn't have it in me to get up and play. Plus, I always slept more than kids and teens and adults my age. About 2-3 hours more than my peers. I didn't have the energy to do my homework, probably because of ADHD and endocrine problems happening simultaneously. Life always seemed a little more difficult for me, and then it felt a LOT more difficult as I got to the second part of my teenage years. And now it's honestly the same, I still have the same gap I had as a teen, but with a lot more work lol. I go to therapy, I take meds, I go to the gym, I take my sleep seriously, I don't drink, smoke or vape, and I still have a gap. My peers went to college, I couldn't finish college. They had energy for real-life romantic relationships, real-life friendships, projects, and I never had that.

This boggled me a lot. My parents stopped calling me lazy and started calling me selfish, anxious and disorganized. Selfish because I ignored chores, other people's feelings and stuff that envolved "wasted energy" in my eyes. Anxious because I was erratic, afraid and socially deprived. and Disorganized because something was always being neglected. Something was always off, even when I tried to lock in everything at the same time, I couldn't stop some balls from falling while I juggled them all. It was so stressful to never being called anything good. I'm glad people outside my nuclear family were doing it, but I have to say, I thought they were being polite, and not sincere. I couldn't imagine my family saying any of that to me, so I thought it was fake.

Cut back to me now, I'm tired. I've been through inumerous small burnouts and one actual burnout (it lasted about 2 years). I've considered suicide. I've been on and off depression for 10 years, and on and off anxiety for 15 years. Sometimes, I'm not even depressed but I think of suicide, because I had expectations I was never able to achieve even if I tried. I'd always end up burning out, resting and starting over. 

Some things really changed my perspective though. Atheism helped me quite a lot, because now I didn't fear God, and that was like lifting the world off my shoulders. Self help books made realize that becoming a marthyr was not good at all, and putting myself down wasn't doing anything. After I had some diagnosis, other stuff made sense. I adapted according to people with the same issues online and I had great improvements. I started taking anti-depressants that helped my anxiety, depression and ADHD simultaneously. Going to the gym helped, leaving my parents house helped, working helped, university DID NOT help. As I started crossing all attempts from my list, I got a better sense of self, but I still didn't feel like my energy was at a manageable point. I feel like I'm going through the motions a whole lot and like I can't enjoy moments because everything is a chore. My body just wants to sleep and to lay down and do nothing. Doing nothing for a couple of days can sometimes give me energy for 48 hours and I overdo everything in these 48 hours... just to rest again after the hours come to an end. It's a never-ending cycle of attempts, that work and then stop working.