January 10th, 2018. This was a beautiful day filled with so many emotions. I gave birth the most handsome baby boy, Joshua Graham. 10 short days after being discharged from the hospital after delivery I got extremely sick. Spiking a fever to 105.9 and ended up in the Tulia, Texas ER. Of course both Amarillo and both Lubbock hospitals were on diversion, due to a huge flu outbreak, so I was sent by ambulance to the Plainview, Texas hospital and admitted there for 2 days waiting on BSA to have an opening. 2 days later I was sent by ambulance once again from Plainview to BSA in Amarillo, Texas where I spent another 7 days running what seemed like a million tests. Finally we found out there was a tiny piece of the placenta left in my uterus from the birth. But by the time they figured that out my lungs where flooded from all the IV antibiotics and fluids I had been getting constantly since arriving at the Tulia ER 9 days earlier. So that bought me another couple days in hospital. This was a very traumatic stay for me. I felt at an all time low. My body was at its wits end, between this and my already damaged thyroid my body was straight exhausted.

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After, I was discharged from the hospital my pain never truly went away. I always had a dull ache in my pelvic region. That pain got 110X worse when Auntie Flow came to visit, but even she started coming at random times of the month. This was my first red flag. Then came the painful sex. Talk about a relationship killer. Mason never held this against me and I will forever love him for that. I reached out to my OBGYN in at the time and voiced my concerns we started running more labs and tests. I had a series of ultrasounds to try and see what was causing my chronic pain. Nothing was making itself known though. This went on for months. The more tests we did the more frustrated I got. My pain was getting worse but since people couldn’t see it I began to think my pain was just in my head because that is what people were telling me. Nothing we were doing was working. I got to the point where I was taking high doses of opioid painkillers every 6 hours to just make the pain bearable enough to function like a somewhat normal person.  For more time then I’m proud to admit (1.5 years). I spent hundreds of dollars a month on opioid pain meds, supplements, and laxatives. I’m sure you’re scratching your head as to why I was buying so many laxatives??? Sadly, I was on a never ending hamster wheel. I was in chronic pain from my UNKNOWN diagnoses so I reached for the prescription meds my OBGYN prescribed to me. Yes, they stopped that pain temporarily but only caused a different pain, severe constipation. So then I would start the laxatives. I felt like I was just adding to my already overwhelming problems. I was at a complete loss. This hamster wheel lead to my anxiety starting to creep back into my daily routine which only got worse putting a wedge into all my relationships. And to add to all the confusion, my thyroid labs were just getting higher from all the stress my body was under. At the point my meds had been increased all the way up to 200mg of Levothyroxine. I needed answers. My OBGYN suggested doing an explorative laparoscopic surgery to rule out endometriosis. I had no clue what he was looking for or what it could do to my body. I had never heard of it before. I had been in the medical field for almost 6 years at this point so I was completely shocked to find out that this awful disease effects 1 in 10 women but I had literally never in my entire life heard of this. This started my in depth research about Endometriosis. I don’t know about y’all but when I learned how many medical professionals are uneducated about this disease my heart broke. I prayed for weeks that when my doctor got inside my body on surgery day that he would find anything but Endometriosis. I was terrified. I remember waking up from surgery and him coming to have “the talk” it was the most relieving yet gut wrenching conversation I’ve ever had. Endometriosis was obviously found, later we found out it was Stage 4. I felt like a weight was lifted off my shoulders knowing that there was in fact something causing the pain that people told me was in my head, but then came the wave of complete heartbreak knowing that I was just beginning my new life long journey with Endometriosis.

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Let this huge misconception be addressed early on… surgery is NOT a cure for endometriosis. This is something I will live with for the rest of my life but mark my words I WILL FIGHT. I will fight for a cure. I will fight for the women who like me are being told this is in their head and that we are being over dramatic. We are taught from a very young age that doctors are ALWAYS right, ALWAYS know best, and what they say goes. But sometimes they are wrong. Sometimes they need to be reminded that the body is forever evolving so their medical practices need to be evolving too. You have to be your own advocate. Nobody else can feel what you feel in your own body. If you think something is wrong 99.9% of the time there truly is something wrong. Find the medical team that is going to let you voice your concerns and then help you do everything you can to find and treat it. 

After my surgery my pain was gone. That sharp stabbing pain I lived with for 1.5 years was just gone. I let myself get my hopes up that maybe just maybe that myth wasn’t a myth at all. Four glorious months of pain free living. My periods even regulated out for awhile. I was so excited. I was taking my supplements and feeling great. We started our holiday travels (we are living in Winter Haven, Fl at the time for Masons job) back to Texas for Christmas and that dull ache started creeping back in on and off the entire time I was home for 2 weeks. I thought it was just from being the the car so much and my poor diet choices over the holidays. But the around the same time next month the pain appeared again and I began to noticed it coming around my period and ovulation times. As time went on the pain began getting worse - sharp stabbing like before. My thoughts started racing. I started researching like a mad woman about how likely it was for my endometriosis to come back after my surgery and what that looked like. And what do you know? My symptoms were the same as so many other women. I knew my disease was back with vengeance. My sweet friend Kristen saw that I was suffering with chronic pain again and didn’t hesitate to share Full Spectrum Hemp Oil with me. December 2018 my life forever changed. I told you this stuff was the best money I ever spent. I wasn’t just feeding you fluff. My pain was back to the point where I was fixing to call my OBGYN for another prescription of painkillers. But this oil replaced that. Just 2ml a day and topical cream as needed on my tummy and back. I knew people were loving CBD for chronic pain but I didn’t truly believe it until it happened to me. I was sold on CBD from there on.