Restrictions on birth control and abortion could kill me.

[Neoma]

I've posted about this before in 2013 within the pro-choice group but I think it bears repeating in a time like this. I'm going to break-down the medical lingo as much as possible. I don't really care if this makes you uncomfortable. This is how birth control and abortion is healthcare.

I have endometriosis. That is where the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of my body. When I get my period, it bleeds in places other than in my uterus. It creates scar tissue. I found out I had endometriosis when I had a 6 centimeter cyst on my left ovary. It was a complication of endometriosis. I was in pain from endometriosis for years at that point. But this pain was unbearable and called for immediate attention. My gynecologist went into surgery thinking he simply had to remove the cyst. He went into damage control mode. Endometriosis does not show up on ultrasounds, only the cyst did. He removed as much scar tissue as he could. He left the damage around my rectum because he didn't want me to have a colostomy bag. My uterus was untouched by the endometriosis. He could not find my right ovary, only a sickly looking fallopian tube. My left ovary didn't look viable (possibly no eggs,) and it was stuck to the abdomen wall by scar tissue. Because of this he didn't remove the cyst because damaging my only ovary would mean I would have no chance of having children. The fallopian tube was also wrapped around my left ovary. The weight of the ovarian cyst was so great, it flipped my fallopian tube around the ovary. That was the pain I felt that warranted immediate attention, who knows how long I lived with the cyst.

When I was out of surgery, my husband and mom gently told me the news. They explained I might never be able to have children. I was 21 years old and I ran out of the room in shock before I even heard all of it. You grow up with the notion that you have all the working parts that everyone else has. You expect to be the same.

I have to take birth control every single day to stop my periods, to stop pain. To stop it from spreading and getting worse. On a birth control pack there is a week of different colored pills, those are vitamins. I have to skip over that line and go to another pack. My periods were so painful I couldn't move from my bed for days, and I threw up often. Once a month. I am not upset that I don't have periods anymore, I think of it as a silver lining of having this medical condition. I still feel pain once and awhile from the ovary being stuck to the abdomen wall but I just have to do pain management. I don't have surgery to fix the problems scar tissue continues to make, because surgery causes more scar tissue.

For regular endometriosis pain (probably the cyst,) I was balled up, writhing in pain multiple times as a teenager, begging my parents to go to the hospital from all this, and I couldn't afford to go to the hospital at the time. I didn't even have insurance when I was experiencing endometriosis pain before. My mom had cancer and all the money went towards her COBRA. I couldn't go to the hospital for problems I was having until I married my husband at age 20 and got on his insurance. I mention this because if I had insurance during the time my mom had cancer, I probably wouldn't have a fallopian tube wrapped around my ovary and this story would be different. The healthcare system failed me. It failed my family especially when we went bankrupt over my mom's cancer. Later when my husband was out of work, I was denied to be on my husband's plan when we were trying to get insurance on the open market (instead of under Obama care, which was new and more expensive) because of this surgery for the ovarian cyst, I was flat out rejected and had to go on my dad's insurance.

What could possibly cause me to die? We don't know if my ovary is viable or not, but the fallopian tube being wrapped around means that I am more at risk of an ectopic pregnancy if I ever do get pregnant. That means the fertilized egg is likely to get attached in the fallopian tube instead of in the womb. Which is a complete time bomb. You can't replant it back into the womb, and the zygote will grow until it kills me unless I get an abortion. As for birth control, if it is removed from the market, each period I have will slowly destroy me, it could spread to my uterus and destroy it where I would absolutely have no chance of having children in the future and can spread to other organs in the pelvic area. Not to mention I am more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy without birth control because I would be ovulating again. If I have any eggs they'll tumble down and possibly get fertilized because I'm a married adult that has sex... I won't be shamed of that. I'm 30 years old, I would actually love to become a mother if a fertilized egg got implanted in the womb, a child would be wanted. However I am not devastated if I can't have children either. I'm not going to try in vitro fertilization, even if that would be the only way to have kids biologically. I think there's this stereotype of the devastated woman who wails about not being able to have kids, and that's just not me. Other health professionals basically encourage me to try to have kids naturally for about a year before getting help, and that is WITH the risk of ectopic pregnancy and the risk of endometriosis getting worse. I feel like that is gambling too much with my life. I'm not that desperate.

Naturally, I get worried when I hear anti-birth control rhetoric and when people talk about Roe. V. Wade being overturned. In a nice world, I could keep this stuff private. But we live in a world where people think I should die from an ectopic pregnancy if it means saving all the other zygotes in the world. I feel that I have to speak up.