Medical Diary: One Woman's Ordeal

Laura Hutchison
Excerpt Mademoiselle Magazine

One afternoon in August, I was at work when a sharp pain ripped through my abdomen. It was the most severe pain I'd experienced yet, and its location--low and on my right side--made me think immediately that I had appendicitis. I headed to an urgent care center. The doctor there told me the problem was a bladder infection--even though the urine culture she did was negative. I left with a prescription for antibiotics and a very uneasy feeling. Less than three hours later, I was doubled over in pain in the local emergency room.

This time, the doctor gave me a pelvic exam ant told me I had a ruptured ovarian cyst. I was sent home with a prescription for painkillers and instructed to ''take it easy.'' I'd feel better in a few days, he said. I did not.

I had reached the breaking point. Desperate for help, I looked through the Fredericksburg phone book for a new gynecologist and chose Montgomery Johns. Dr. Johns ordered an ultrasound, which confirmed that their was a cyst on my ovary (though not a ruptured one, as I had been told in the emergency room). He prescribed birth control pills to shrink the mass. When I went back a month later, the cyst was indeed gone. Unfortunately, the pain was still agonizing. By now, I was thoroughly confused--and very scared.

But Dr. Johns thought that, at last, he had found the answer to what was wrong with me. The cyst, he explained, was a red herring--its presence explained some of my pain, but because it was now gone and the pain was not, he suspected that my history of symptoms pointed to something else. He immediately scheduled me for a surgical procedure called laparoscopy to confirm his diagnosis.

The surgery took less than thirty minutes. I was given a general anesthesia, then Dr. Johns made a quarter-inch incision in my naval. Through a narrow tube, he pumped carbon dioxide gas, inflating my abdomen to make it easier to see my organs. Then he inserted a small, lighted telescope and, through another tiny incision in my bikini line, an instrument to prod my organs into the view scope.

My mother is the first person I saw when I woke up. The shock on her face frightened me. ''It's

endometriosis,'' she said. ''How bad is that?'' I asked. ''Pretty bad.''

I had my diagnosis--a disease I had never even heard of. Dr. Johns estimated that by then it had

been wreaking havoc inside me for the last five years.

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