Skip to main contentPeople often talk about being gaslit by the medical system. What they don't talk about is what happens next, when you gaslight yourself.
For years, I convinced myself that what I was feeling was normal. I worked full-time in a demanding 24/7 job, raising three beautiful girls with a husband who worked away, while travelling frequently for work, and I just kept showing up, even though my body was slowly unravelling. People told me I just had bad periods and that I was moody. I just struggled through when we moved homes, and just as I started to relax, the pain stopped being monthly and became part of everyday life.
Looking back now, there were so many pieces of my puzzle. There were the fertility struggles. Two years of trying to conceive, endless tests, and medications. I wondered why my body wasn't doing what everyone else's seemed to.Then came the pelvic pain that never really went away. The left-sided sciatica and extreme lower back pain, bloating and bowel pain. Symptoms like pins and needles that led to CT scans and MRIs with no answers. Even chest pain that resulted in heart investigations. Every symptom was investigated on its own, but nobody seemed to step back and look at the bigger picture. Eventually, neither did I.
When scan after scan is reassuring, tests come back normal, and appointments end without answers, you start believing the problem is you. You stop complaining. Maybe everyone else copes better. Maybe you're overreacting. Maybe this is just what getting older feels like. That was the hardest part. Not the pain itself but slowly losing trust in my own instincts.
It took more than a decade before the last DIE ultrasound in Sydney last week (I'm in regional NSW) finally confirmed that I have adenomyosis and multiple large deep infiltrating endometriosis lesions on my uterosacral ligaments tethering my uterus and sidewall. My diagnosis has brought relief, but it also brought grief. Relief because I finally had an explanation. Grief because I couldn't stop wondering how different life might have been if someone had connected the dots years earlier.
I am in the ED every week, on medications, heat packs, and everything else. My daughters are pre-teens and think this is what they will have to deal with too! I pray they don't. I'm waiting for a consultation with my specialist in four weeks and a laparoscopy to follow, but one thing has changed. I no longer question whether my pain is real. My body had been trying to tell me something for years. I just stopped believing it.
If sharing my story helps one woman trust herself instead of dismissing what she's feeling, then it will have been worth it.
The worst kind of gaslighting isn't when someone else convinces you your pain isn't real. It's when you finally convince yourself.