My Story: Being Supported During My Experience With Endometriosis

By Saniya Ghanoui —

CB talks about how she was able to stay strong while dealing with her endometriosis diagnosis.

Transcript:

OBOS Today: That’s really amazing to hear. What got you through? I mean you think of just such a long period of time dealing with all this. What helps you be able to be so strong and get through that? 

CB: Prayer. Combined with me knowing that I will be able to help someone else. I always say that like especially with this, I’m a complete open book because there are a lot of young women who have these severe pains that have these issues, and their family is like, “Oh, it’s nothing. You just have a low tolerance for pain,” and that’s not the case. 

And you have these women who complain to their doctors like this is wrong and that is wrong, and they don’t listen to them. And I always say if I could just help one person and say like you know go and get—ask your doctor, like test me for X, Y and Z. 

Test me for endometriosis. Like if they got to do the laparoscopic exam, it’s uncomfortable after the fact, but I’m glad that I got it done because I wouldn’t have known.  

So had we waited longer, I wouldn’t have been able to have Carson at all. Um or it would have gotten so bad where, you know like, and at one point, I wasn’t ovulating at all. 

So, Carson could have—Like it would have never happened because they wouldn’t have been able to get eggs. Like it’s a whole thing with the fertility process. 

 So, you know, I just always say that, you know, ask your doctors to test you and my doctor even said, if your doctor refuses to test you, tell them you want to end your record. That you know, you said you didn’t want to test me because of X, Y, and Z. 

And nine times out of ten they’re gonna go ahead because they don’t want that issue on their hands if you know God forbid something is to happen. And they’re like oh wow, she asked, and they said no. 

So, and then of course I had my family support while this was all during COVID. 

So, four months I didn’t—I was not able to see my family at all because I was in the hospital at the time, the hospitals was allowing one visitor. 

So, like my mom—what my mom ended up being my support person. And then they—At one point I may have had to get transferred to ICU. So, they were like—They would allow my dad to come in so that I could have two support people there. 

But for the most part it was just me and my mom. And because my sister was preparing to go to college, my mom will be there for a few days out of the week and then she would go home on weekends because of course, she still had stuff to take care of at home. And then my family, because I was on like the first floor they would come to the window, and I would kind of see them like that. 

So that’s what kind of got me through, and just knowing that like there was light at the end of the tunnel and that I was gonna have this beautiful baby at the end and while it was stressful and I didn’t understand, I knew that it was all like for good reason.