Day 7: A conversation with my doctor

"I think the Mirena is giving me anxiety."

"Anxiety is not a recognized side-effect of the Mirena."

This is a conversation that I had with my gynecologist 3 months after my surgery and diagnosis.

I was waking up in the middle of the night feeling uncomfortable and anxious, like the room was swallowing me whole and something was just not right.

My doctor was not seeing the whole picture. I don’t know if it was the hormones from the Mirena* the shock of the diagnosis, or my body’s response to some fairly serious surgery, but in the end, that doesn’t really matter.

What matters was that I was giving a cry for help – I wasn’t sleeping properly and I wasn’t coping with life and the after-effects of my diagnosis and surgery.

However, my doctor wasn’t seeing it that way. He just saw me as a uterus, disconnected from any other process in my body.

I am not the first person to experience anxiety after diagnosis with endometriosis/surgery/Mirena. I will not be the last. I eventually went and talked to my GP about it and she's been helping me out.

I’ve had to think about whether the Mirena is for me. At the moment, since I have no treatment backup plan, the last thing I want to do is remove the Mirena even though I think it may be causing some of my problems. I can't go back to missing at least a day of work a month.

However, life is pretty good at the moment, and it feels like I'm finally getting the swing of things. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel.

In light of this topic I will be posting some tips for when you visit the doctor sometime this month. This is partly to remind myself for when I get disheartened, but I also hope that if you are out there and in pain, that it will help you get treatment.

*Mirena is a T-shaped plastic device (known as an intra-uterine device or IUD) placed in the uterus that releases progesterone into the body and lasts up to 5 years. It can be used as a contraception but is also currently thought to be the most effective treatment for endometriosis.

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This month I will be taking part in National Health Blog Post Month. Check back every day to see the new topic and learn more about endometriosis. Apparently I like to break all the rules, so today I am writing about Day 3's intended topic, "A conversation with your doctor".