Heavy bleeding for years

This is Teresa’s story of really severe heavy bleeding, a scan which showed a large cyst, followed by a laparoscopy where it was discovered she had really severe endometriosis which was all over her abdomen




This is Teresa’s story ….


I found out I had endometriosis 3 years ago. It all started I suppose from the age of 12, and every month I was being sick and curled up in pain with my periods. This went on for years and in this time, I was given the pill as treatment but it would make the symptoms worse.


I was always off school because of endometriosis. When I was in my twenties, I would bleed so heavy it would come through my clothing, and my thirties was just as bad. When I got to 35 I started to get dizzy spells, it came to the point where I couldn't stand up and had to go sick from work.


At this time, I was bleeding so heavy and I would only have 1 week free in between periods. I couldn't stand properly for 6 months because of the dizziness, my eyes also felt strange, I couldn't read, look at the telly or lights, my hearing was over sensitive, I couldn't bear any noise and I felt like I was walking on sponge everything felt strange.


After 6 months of rest I started to feel better and I was diagnosed with an inner ear imbalance and something called vestibular ocular disorder. I don't think they really know what caused it. I started doing exercise like yoga then something happened the next day, my left side of my leg felt like it had been pulled out of its socket, I couldn't stand on it and it was really hot and had prickly and sharp stabbing aches which spread around my back and hip and underneath me.


I went to my doctor who said he could see nothing wrong but blood kept appearing in my urine samples. In the end I went private to a gynaecologist who said I had a small cyst on left ovary and fibroids in the womb, that it was nothing to worry about and she would send me to a urologist because of the blood in urine.


When I saw the urologist, he did a scan and said I'm not happy about the cyst, it has grown very large and we think it could be a dermoid cyst, so I was referred back to my gynaecologist and she put me in for a laparoscopy. After the laparoscopy was carried out, I was told that it was a chocolate cyst and they had removed it and that I was covered in endometriosis everywhere in my pelvis, and they said they had never seen anything like it.


They put me on zoladex analogues implants which I was on for 13 months alongside HRT. I had my second laparoscopy which they said most of the endometriosis on my right side had died off, but my left side was still alive so they cut most of what they could away but I had a uterine nodule.


So they did what they could as endometriosis was on my bladder, behind the womb in between the womb, and the back on the bowel which they shaved and other areas.


I was told that I would always have this disease, there is no cure from it, only treatment of hormone therapy and operations, which I have come to accept.


Apart from the symptoms of this continuous leg, inner thigh, pubic, pelvis and hip and under rib pain, all on the left side, it is a constant dull ache with hot stabbing symptoms which are prickly in nature.


Anyway I have been put on the Yasmin contraceptive pill and take it continuously so I don't have any more period. If I do stop it I get terrible symptoms still and bad PMT, so they have told me to stay on it.


I feel better for not having periods any more although I sometimes get breakthrough bleeding and bloated abdomen but I am now concentrating on my leg and hip symptoms, which is what I went to the doctors in the first place for. I do think that is connected to the endometriosis as it would worsen when I had my periods and so do my symptoms of dizziness.


Also I think that my left ovary may be the cause too but they say its okay. The only other thing I would say with this disease is you can get very tearful and feel depressed and have symptoms of muscular aches, sometimes feverish and suffer from severe tiredness.


Most doctors do not tell you that these symptoms come with endometriosis and sometimes you are just left feeling like its in your head, but believe me it's not, most women I have spoken too also suffer from this with endometriosis, so if you feel like this it is best to tell your doctor as there are medications to deal with it. 

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