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Anonymous

Hi girl,

Sorry to hear you got diagnosed with this condition. The same thing happened to me two years ago. So I can share my experience and hope that helps. Generally, when a cyst is first discovered, the doctor won't recommend surgery right away because a fair amount of them disappear on their own. But there's a certain threshold in cyst size, where they generally start to recommend surgery. And cysts for endo are ugly cysts that keep on bleed in itself and grow overtime with each of your period so they hurt more and more. The first step they try to do is always birth control pills (generally low estrogen, high progesterone combo pills, that should help shrink it or something) and if that doesn't work, surgery is usually the next step. There are other hormone treatments like Lupron etc, but those have a bad rep.

Anyway, my cyst was 8cm and even then my doctor said to take the pills first, but being busy with work I never did and when I went back for a check up the following year, it was still there. It was obvious it wasn't going away on its own so we did a surgery to remove it, turns out it was two cysts on the same ovary. The surgery lasted 3 hours instead of the one hour they projected. But they saved my ovary! The surgery actually isn't terrible if it is laproscopic, you recover in about 5-10 days because the wound is small but you do still feel like crap and I cried a lot that I got this terrible condition.

But with regard to will your cysts come back, the short answer is yes. The surgery is supposed to kind of give you a clean slate, because your adhesions and cysts are making your organs all twisted and whatnot, or just causing you pain because you're responding to menstral hormones on places you shouldn't, like your cysts, and adhesions on other organs. And then usually they hope that after you've "cleaned" all the mess out, you can avoid its reoccurence by taking birth control pills. This is in US. In China, where I also saw a doctor, they have more build up your immune system approach, they surgically "clean" you of all the crap and then give you very strong immune support meds and Chinese medicine for clotting/fibrins and general menstrual type medicine.

Either way, it's meant to give you a fresh start. Recurrence is very high for endo cysts, though. I got mine back because I again did not go on the pills and just didn't really do much for my health after the surgery. I just don't like the idea of birth control pills because a lot of hormones are synthetic just so drug companies can put a patent on it, when they can actually just product all natural ones. So obviously I am not going to have surgery every year. My cyst is still quite big, like 8-10cm. It did made me re-look at options to treat the root of this thing. Some women basically stay on pills until right before they want to have children, and then do surgery to make the environment better for conception, etc.

I am sorry this is probably not making you feel better. But the short answer to your question is no, it will not make it go away and relieve you permanently.

I am currently trying some lifestyle changes, which I think are actually helping. Nothing drastic and you might think I am crazy. But I switched all my feminine products to organic cotton, all of my personal care products to organic and all natural, and all household cleaners to all natural, where I gated every single ingredient on the products I now use. And I also made some dietary changes too, but that's hard to stick to because I eat out a lot. I actually think that made a huge difference as my period pains are now a lot less (I used to faint from them w/o painkillers, but now I'm actually okay taking only one advil every 5-8 hours), but again with these things, sometimes it's a coincidence or just in your head. I speculate the biggest effect was the switching to organic feminine products & toilet paper etc (I use a pantiliner everyday, so it's really constantly on your sensitive areas). Now I am starting to look into dietary supplements etc, but really the above is actually the easiest switch where you just have to do the research once and get on with it, versus food etc takes more effort.

March 20, 2012 - 1:24pm

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