Women are frequently diagnosed when they are unable to conceive, though endometriosis does not necessarily cause infertility, nor is it cured by pregnancy.

What both her surgeon and the doctor failed to explain was that endometriosis does not resolve on its own, and that if left untreated, it could continue to cause excruciating pain.Įndometriosis is commonly understood as cells similar to those of the uterine lining ending up on other organs, leading to inflammation, scarring and a lot of pain. When Norman finally undergoes surgery to untwist her fallopian tube, the most immediate source of pain, the gynaecologist mumbles something about noticing endometriosis, a comment in the margins of Norman’s operative report. In Norman’s words, “I was the primary source of data for the investigation into my condition, and yet it often felt like the data I presented was questioned by others as unreliable, which made me question myself.”

The diagnosis relies on narrative, yet patients find their stories doubted.

In the days after the episode in the shower, Norman herself was surprised by how completely she hid the searing pain from her roommate. From the outside, people with endometriosis appear normal. There is no reliable blood test, no imaging scan, no urine dip. What began as a chronicle of her transition from dancer and student to determined patient grew into a book documenting her experience with a mysterious chronic illness, woven with the flaws she observes in the treatment of a disease that plagues at least one woman in ten.Īn invisible illness, it can elude years of diagnoses by multiple doctors. This narrative – reconstructed from social media posts, journal entries, and emails to professors – forms the opening of Norman’s debut book, Ask Me About My Uterus which recounts her long and agonising battle with the poorly understood pelvic pain disorder called endometriosis. Still debilitated after two trips to the emergency room, where she was prescribed antibiotics and then told she should see a gynaecologist, Norman began to realise she might need to take a leave. Norman spent the better part of a week willing herself to get better college was the first place she had felt at ease, and her scholarship and means for staying in New York were contingent on keeping up with her classes. “A stabbing pain in my middle, as though I were on the receiving end of an unseen assailant’s invisible knife.” “It was as sudden as a thunderclap,” she writes. Going through the motions, still mostly asleep, she reached to rinse her hair. O n an unremarkable morning in September of 2010, Abby Norman, a sophomore at Sarah Lawrence College, took a shower.

Ask me about my uterus abby norman