What was inside me?!
Dismissed by the medics, yet I was on the verge of exploding!
Waking up bleary eyed on the sofa, I saw my mum Jane, then 49, looking at me in concern. ‘Did you spend the night downstairs again?’ she said.
‘Yes,’ I groaned, rubbing my stomach. It was still pink where I’d had a hot-water bottle pressed against it for hours.
It was late July 2015, and for the last week I’d spent the night on the couch with crippling stomach pains.
It’d come on suddenly a few days earlier – like period pain, only a thousand times worse.
At 16, I should’ve been out with my mates, enjoying the summer holidays.
But I could barely stand. Over-the-counter painkillers didn’t make a dent and the doctors had no answers.
‘It looks like constipation,’ one GP said, but medication they prescribed didn’t help and I was soon back at the emergency walk-in centre.
Yet despite the obvious pain I was in, no-one took me seriously.
‘She’s hysterical,’ one nurse told my mum. ‘You know how worked up young girls get.’
Mum was too shocked to reply.
And I was bent over, in too much pain to utter a word.
I knew my own body. The pain was often so bad
I’d be sick, even black out.
A few weeks later, we went to Devon to celebrate
Mum’s 50th.
By now, I’d been in constant pain for a month and the four-hour car journey to the cottage was torture.
By 3am the following night,
I couldn’t take the agony any longer. ‘I can’t do this any more,’ I sobbed, creeping into Mum’s room, clutching my tum. Mum drove me
straight to A&E, where nurses immediately hooked me up to IV painkillers.
‘Finally, they’re taking me seriously,’ I said to Mum.
That night, I was moved to Intensive Care, still in agony despite the drip.
‘We’re going to give you gas and air,’ a nurse said. It’s a mixture of oxygen and nitrous oxide gas used as a painkiller.
Taking deep breaths into an oxygen mask, I crouched on the bed on all fours, trying to absorb the waves of pain.
‘She looks as if she’s labour,’ I heard a nurse say to Mum.
After a few days of tests, the doctors found something.
‘You have a bicornuate uterus,’ one said, then went on to say, ‘You have two uteruses, one cervix, a single ovary, and only one kidney.’
And the reason I was in agony? My smaller second womb was blocked, had been slowly filling with blood since I’d started my periods four years earlier.
Now it was full to bursting, almost ready to explode! My insides were a ticking time bomb.
As I stared at the doctor in shock, Mum burst into tears.
‘What’s going to happen?’ she sobbed.
It was so rare, the doctors could only drain the blood from the second womb to make me more comfortable until
I could see a specialist.
For a short while after, I felt better. But, soon, the familiar ripple of pain crept back.
That autumn, I met with a specialist in London with experience of my condition. Again, I underwent tests. Then, in mid-October, she called…‘You have the wrong diagnosis,’ the consultant explained to me.
She said that, whereas a bicornuate uterus is a heart-shaped one, my condition was called uterus didelphys. It can have several variations, but in my case, it meant I had two wombs, two cervixes, but two ovaries not one as originally told. I did only have one kidney.
I also had a piece of skin which had grown over the top of my second cervix. It was stopping the blood being released each month, filling my womb.
Sadly, there was more bad news.
‘It’s unlikely you’ll be able to get pregnant, and if you do, carrying the baby past six months will be too high risk,’ the consultant said.
It was a lot to take in. I was only 16, thought babies were a long way off – but now I was being told it was impossible for me.
Back at home, as I awaited more surgery to have the skin removed from my second cervix, I tried to come to terms with the news.
I’d already missed several weeks of my first year of college, so I deferred starting for a year.
Sitting at home, while all my friends moved on without me, I felt low.
And, when family members announced they were pregnant, I could barely muster a smile.
That’ll never happen for me, I’d think bitterly.
And I was still in unbearable pain.
Finally, in December 2015, I had the surgery.
And afterwards, for the first time in six months, I was free of pain.
For a long time after, I panicked every month.
I worried when my period came, the agonising cramps would return, too.
But they didn’t.
And, gradually, I learnt to relax.
It’s still difficult to comprehend that being able to carry a baby might not be in my future.
But I try not to dwell on it. I just want other women to hear my story.
We know when something is wrong with our bodies.
Trust your instincts and keep pushing for answers.
For the first time in six months, I was free of pain
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