Hello! Happy Thursday! As promised, here’s more re-released endo content because I loooooove it.
If you’re a paid subscriber, thank you! If you’re not, maybe consider becoming one!? Doing so is one of the best ways to support my work.
Before we get into it, please note that this topic may feel fresh and heavy for some. If this is you, please take care. Skip this one. Come back another day.
Lastly, I am hoping to feature some endo stories on Adventures in Vaginas! If you would be open to sharing your story of diagnosis and care, please email me. My intention is to weave a narrative of (hopefully!) several diverse stories to support others who may need that nudge to look further into their own symptoms. You can reach out to me at cait@ritualpelvichealth.com. Thank you!
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: I love treating folks with endo. These are my people. And also, endo sucks hard.
I wrote an endo primer (i.e. wtf is this condition and how do I know if I should get this checked out?) that you can check out here. Today, I’m going to talk about something I’ve been seeing quite a lot of recently, which is folks experiencing significant pain and symptoms post-surgically.
Here’s the tl;dr:
The “gold standard” of treatment for endometriosis is laparoscopic excision of endometriosis-associated tissue.
Higher chronic pain scores pre-surgically correlate to higher pain scores post-surgically, despite removing maladaptive tissue. Weird, right!? Read on.
We are coming to better understand endometriosis as an example of a structural driver to chronic pelvic pain syndrome, which responds best to — you guessed it! — nervous system regulation.
The deep dive:
Let’s start off with my personal opinion on the shit-storm I am about to open up, which is that I am neither for or against excision surgery. I truly believe that there is no right or wrong decision when it comes to healthcare; only the right decision at the right time with the information that an individual has.