December 6, 2004 ~ Death Peddlers
Monday.
Due to recent decisions of Morgan's and mine, I've been looking anew at information regarding possible complications of pregnancy due to endometriosis, and how to prevent them if possible, so that I know what I may be getting myself into.
I've concluded that most of what can be done is pretty much the same stuff that I have been doing to reduce the endometriosis in general: careful diet and exercise, and avoidance of certain toxins (that are often found in feminine products especially). The only other precaution that I have not taken is surgery, mainly because I've yet to have a doctor who felt I should have it. (I have a strong suspicion that this was because those doctors have been uninformed or because I did not have insurance at the time, but we'll see.) All of the drug treatments out there not only don't cure endo and don't work entirely (they only suppress symptoms), but all except the pain relief drugs are hormonal and make it impossible to conceive while on them, so those are out of the question when one is attempting to conceive. (Duh.)
Anyway, it looks like no matter what I do, miscarriage and ectopic (tubal) pregnancy are much more likely for me. (Though there are a few promising articles out there which say that past studies did not have appropriate "controls," so they may be misleading as to how much worse miscarriage is for endo patients). What it boils down to is that I can hope it doesn't happen, but there is not much that can be done to prevent miscarriage or complications other than what I have been doing.
All of that is not any surprise, and I wasn't really bothered by it. What is pissing me off is this. Many articles talk about how one of the biggest risks of a pregnancy with endometriosis is that, if the baby is female, she may inherit the disease. Several of these articles talked about how a woman with endometriosis may want to consider not having children, because it would be irresponsible to pass the disease on.
Essentially, "Life with endometriosis is not worth living."
Good grief. Not this again.
I just don't understand how casually authors can say this. I mean, you write an article about endometriosis, you know that your main audience is going to be other doctors and... women who have endometriosis. You have essentially just told the majority of your audience that a life with the sort of pain that they have been dealing with ever since puberty is a life not worth living, a life too horrible to create. Gee. Thanks. Guess I'll go throw myself off a bridge before my next period, because it's just not worth it.
I don't mean to downplay the severity of endometriosis. It is usually a very debilitating illness. I can't keep track of all of the times that I've missed out on something because the pain was too much that day. Or because I just couldn't do something where there wouldn't be a bathroom available every half hour so that I didn't make a huge mess. (Or because I'd passed out. Heh.) And yes, the fertility issues that it has brought up have been especially painful on the emotional level.
But. Too horrible of an illness to never have lived? To never have fallen in love or gone on a hike or written a thesis or read a great book? To never have run a mile or petted a wolf or seen waves beat against the shore? Hell, for that matter, to never have cried? To never have striven toward a goal and failed? To never have lost a friend or broken up with a love? To never have felt pain?
Pain is a part of life, whether it comes from scraping a knee or grieving the death of a loved one or suffering from something like endometriosis. I'm so tired of being confronted with the opinion that "such and such an illness is worse than ever being born."
Oh no. No it's not. Don't say that half of the human population is better off dead. Do you realize what you sound like, when you speak like that?
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