What Women Want: Chocolate and Severe Abdominal Pain

Endometriosis is a term you might have heard mentioned before, but never knew anything about. But it’s a condition affecting 5% to 10% of women. This may seem like a small number at first, but name off ten women you know and consider for a second that statistically one of them already has it, and things suddenly seem more pressing.

Endometriosis is when the tissue that normally lines the uterus (endometrium) grows in other parts of the body. There are about a dozen symptoms of Endometriosis, nearly all of them starting with the word pain. Painful cramps, pain during sex, pain in the lower back, pain, pain, pain. However, just because you don’t feel it doesn’t mean you don’t have it, since the severity of the case doesn’t equal the severity of symptoms. A woman could walk around with uterine lining growing in her fingers and not even know it.

When endometrium grows in and around the ovaries it can cause endometriomas, also known as Chocolate Cysts. These nasty brown bubbles can rupture and lead to more pelvic pain, but I’d say the real problem here is that we let doctors name things. Just imagine trying to explain your important doctor visit to an overly concerned friend at a cocktail party. Throw out a known condition like Lupus or something unrecognizable like hyalophagia and no one bats an eyelash. But tell them a name like Chocolate Cyst and they’ll keep asking you questions until everyone at the party is so overly informed about your uterine health that you’re left alone at the chip and dip table with nothing but your severe abdominal pain for company.

Maybe doctors need to take a page out of Augustus Gloop’s book and realize that chocolate doesn’t make everything better.