Ali’s EndometriosisStory

Ali Schaffer:
Hi, I’m Ali Schaffer and I have been suffering from endometriosis for about 10 years. The past couple of years, I had a lot of pain during my periods and it started to just get much worse. I had a couple of ovarian cysts and I went to see a few doctors and they all told me that there were different things wrong with me. One woman told me I had an infection and tried to just give me antibiotics. One of my cysts, they thought that it was my appendix so they wanted to take my appendix out and realized right before that it was an ovarian cyst. Other doctors just had no clue what was wrong and told me I just had normal cramps. And at that point, I knew that what I was feeling wasn’t normal pain, but it’s really hard to gauge because everyone has cramps, right? So it’s hard to explain what’s different from what you’re feeling when you have endometriosis.

Ali Schaffer:
A family friend actually heard about what was going on with me through my mom and she introduced us to Dr. Seckin who delivered one of her babies. And he was amazing. Spent over an hour with me the first time I saw him and really listened to me and took his time diagnosing the endometriosis. And a year later after I had some other tests done, just to see that there wasn’t anything else going on, I had my surgery.

Ali Schaffer:
About a week later I was back on my feet, back at work, at school, so pretty quick. Well, now I realize that I had a lot out of fatigue and I was just uncomfortable all the time, but I was so used to the pain that I was feeling that I didn’t realize that it was even present in my life on a daily basis. I feel so much better now. I just feel like I have more energy. I look more healthy than I did just on a daily basis. And if you find yourself out of commission for one or two days on a monthly basis, definitely go seek out a specialist, but they might be hard to find, but it’s worth it and it could change your life. And whether it’s endometriosis or something else, it’s not normal to have that pain.