Encouragement for Endometriosis

A positive story spanning laparoscopy, pregnancy, labor and postpartum recovery

In this video Meredy Parker, PT, DPT shares an uplifting story spanning years of working with someone with endometriosis.

Transcribed audio:

Hi. My name is Meredy. I'm away from the clinic for just a couple of days doing some just restful education and one of the things on my to do list was to start making a few videos for our website.So here you go.

I just wanted to share a story about a client that I had the opportunity to work with. I saw her a couple of years ago for some time for very severe abdominal pelvic pain related to endometriosis. She had confirmed endo.

She'd had three laps in the years past, even before they started doing wide excision. She had more of an older procedure. So anyway, I worked with her a lot. She did end up having decided on her own to have another laparoscopy with a Chicago doctor and had, some, just residual pain. A lot of her symptoms did get better. It was more of an excision this time, but she did have a remaining super pubic area pain that was just pretty life altering for her.

Every time she tried to lay down and sleep it kept her up a lot. She had terrible pain at night. We did end up shifting her care after it seemed like mechanically she wasn't responding anymore as well as we did the release and the strengthening and all of this. So it seemed like her pain had shifted more into a centralized pain. And so we were able to, she was very receptive, very receptive and responded very well to increasing our focus on more pain education and activities that she was able to do on her own. And check in with us at the clinic regarding journaling and talking a lot about her response to the pain and ways she could change those messages from her brain. And she did become painfree, basically, which was awesome. So it's just an exciting way to have walked alongside a patient but then also see her learn and develop the skills on her own.

So fast forward a year or so later and she got pregnant and was excited about this new life and did very well during her pregnancy. So I was not seeing her regularly. She did not end up with pregnancy related pelvic girdle pain. She did a few check ins because of some sort of nerve anxiety about that coming on. But we just encouraged her, had her keep moving.She had a lot of nausea, so that was a struggle, but she, as encouraged, did keep moving, knowing that that would be a helpful way to keep her pelvis- less chance of pain coming on.

So anyway, a couple weeks before, within the last month before she was going to deliver, she did come in, which I encouraged her just to check in regarding her upcoming delivery and just decided to do some push prep and just revisit her pelvic floor and just remind her of all the things she'd learned. And in that first visit that she came in, she just expressed a lot of anxiety and fear saying things like what if I end up with a C section and have horrible scarring and my endo pain comes back, and I'll never be able to take care of this baby? Or what if I have a huge tear my pelvic floor. I have all this history of pelvic floor hypertension and overactivity. So anyway, we were able to just talk through a lot of that, do some hands on work and just remind her and her body of how much she had learned, how in-tune she was. I encouraged her saying that she actually probably had so much more wisdom and knowledge regarding that area of the body, given her years of struggle in that area, and just encouraged her to practice some techniques that I showed her where she would just do some perennial release work and just sort of releasing into discomfort and just reminding her that that's exactly what she did for so many years with her endo pain and severe cramping and all that. So anyway, she ended up having a beautiful birth, long hours of laboring, but then her pushing was 20 minutes and she's healing very well.

She is one of our patients that did end up coming in within the first week after delivery and just that something new that we're starting with. We're seeing amazing results with just helping patients get on the right track, reconnecting with their breath and their core right away and just doing safe movement. So anyway, I just wanted to share that happy story and have a good day.