Why Did I Have Such Painful Periods?

It took months of navigating the medical system before I found relief.

- ASEANTÉ RENEE, AS TOLD TO CATHY GARRARD

I was two days away from a trip abroad when I thought I had developed appendicitis. I felt a sharp pain in my lower abdomen that doubled me over, and I immediately went to the ER, where I was given an ultrasound. The good news: It wasn't appendicitis. The bad news: There was a 10-cm mass over one ovary and a 7-cm one over the other. The ER doctor said she thought they were fibroids and that I should see my ob/gyn. But I actually had already seen an ob/gyn, and she had told me not to worry.

AGONIZING MONTHLY PAIN

About two years before that ER visit, I had started to feel pain in my kidney on my left side. It would happen about a week or two before my period, and it was intense. I had an ultrasound then, and my gynecologist told me I had two small fibroids, each about 1 cm to 2 cm wide. I was assured that I didn't need to worry about them because they were so small; she would look at them again at my next annual checkup. But then the world shut down because of COVID, and like many others I went without a checkup for two years.

I pushed through pain that continued to intensify, seeing clients as a therapist and baby-planning with my partner. But my periods kept getting worse, lasting eight or nine days each month, and the symptoms multiplied. It wasn't until that ER visit in November 2021 that I found out that the fibroids had kept growing and were causing the pain.

STYMIED BY INSURANCE