What it's like to live with endometriosis: Nausea

What I look like at the moment (via)

One of the lesser known symptoms of endometriosis is nausea. From what I've read, the cause of this symptom seems to be a combination of factors, but basically it boils down to the fact that there is a whole bunch of inflammation going on in your abdomen and that does not bode well for your digestive system.

I get at least a few days of nausea every month when I’m not on hormone medication (on the Pill I was nauseous every day, and I was nauseous for the first few months on the Mirena, with periodic nauseous occasionally later on).

I'm currently in one of those nauseous phases. It's been about a week and a half. I bought a whole bunch of food a couple of weekends ago to cook up like usual, but it is still sitting in my refrigerator as every day I head to the supermarket to get some more slightly unripe bananas and another litre of lactose-free milk (or potato at lunch for work... yum). (When I’m nauseous the smell of ripe bananas just makes me want to chuck). I’m not sure why I crave bananas and milk so much when I don’t particularly like bananas the rest of the time, but it’s what works for me and I can't handle anything else.

I’ve had this for a long time – I remember summers in highschool when all I could eat were bananas and milk until I felt better. It's another thing that I thought of as normal, but then realised that maybe it wasn't so normal to have week-long nausea for no particular reason when I was finally diagnosed.

Unfortunately the traditional remedies of peppermint tea and ginger don’t work for me, and the smell just makes me feel more nauseous (probably because I've tried to use it for nausea before!).

On the upside, despite the nausea, I am feeling the most consistently positive I have felt in a long time. I still get lower back (flank) pain about every other day, but the bladder pain is nowhere near as consistently bad as it was. It is so nice to get back to having (mostly) normal, functional days, apart from my actual period. I'm also finding that I get tired less easily, although I am still learning how to pace myself, every day. I'm so glad that I got a second opinion and had the Mirena taken out. I don't want to think about what I would've done with myself if I had stayed on it.