尽管疼痛和其他症状
“In the beginning I was really depressed, because I couldn’t function like someone my age should. And I felt isolated, because my friends didn’t know what to do to help me,” Christina recalls.
Friends would invite her to movies, the mall, or out to dinner, but Christina frequently declined. When herleg pain打击，她无法开车，更不用说享受社交了。她说：“我错过了很多事情。”她经常审查自己的朋友，而不是讨论她一生中发生的一切。克里斯蒂娜（Christina）还从事一份兼职工作，而不是全职工作，因此她可以在周期内制定工作时间表，在她知道自己会感到痛苦的日子里呆在家里。
人民警察e with chronic illnesses in all kinds of ways. For Christina, she buried the hurt and loneliness she was feeling from both her suffering and the inability to share her experience with others, and just powered through her days. It was the only way she could get through them.
“I became numb physically and emotionally to the pain. I just kept moving forward, building the mindset that I wasn’t going to think about it until something happened to change it,” she says.
机会遭遇导致正确诊断
然后，九年前，克里斯蒂娜（Christina）遇到了改变她生活的机会。她在医院担任认证护理助理，她的一名患者恰好是妇科医生。
“I told her, ‘I know I’m here to take care of you, but I have to talk to you about something,’” Christina recalls. When she mentioned the “leg migraine” and back pain that accompanied her cycle, the doctor immediately suggested endometriosis.
尽管当时被它衰弱了11年，但克里斯蒂娜从未听说过这种情况。她立即改用了这位医生，后者促进了她的诊断。
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导航子宫内膜异位症诊断
Christina finally allowed herself a little hope that her life could be more like that of her friends. But it actually took a long time for her situation to improve. That’s because her first surgeon did the exploratory surgery necessary to confirm her diagnosis (the only way endo can officially be identified) but didn’t also excise any of the troubling tissue. Another suggested she take expensive drugs, but she worried about side effects. She demurred.
最终，居住在纽约的科科格（Copiague）的克里斯蒂娜（Christina）现在在那里的一家医院工作，他发现了一位她信任的外科医生可以提供帮助。他推荐一个饮食方案有些人认为改善子宫内膜异位症 - 包括消除大豆，谷蛋白, dairy, and meat — and told her the leg pain had been caused by scar tissue pressing on nerves running into her legs.
“当他这么说时，我哭了 - 有人终于可以解释。我感到放心和感激。”克里斯蒂娜说。不久，她进行了七个小时的切除手术，从肠子里切除了子宫内膜状的组织。
有关的：What Is Bowel Endometriosis?
Finding Her Tribe Changed Her World
现在，她终于有了诊断，并有可能感觉更好的潜力，但是克里斯蒂娜仍然没有她可以与之交谈的人，并且感到越来越孤立。她迫切希望与一个支持小组和其他妇女建立联系，每月旅行一年，当时唯一可在康涅狄格州可用的小组，距离康涅狄格州约两个半小时。她第一次参加时，被妇女包围着，还嚼着无麸质饼干和喝杏仁牛奶，她拥抱了她，让她表达了她的恐惧，愤怒和希望，她不知所措。
“It was a whole different world of sisterhood for me,” Christina says.
A year later she felt brave enough to form her own support group closer to home. Christina began sharing her story on her Instagram,@iamaprilchristina, and began writing a blog, EndoNMe.
Christina’s inspiration for naming her blog stemmed from her gratitude for finally having a diagnosis. She wanted her online presence to embody both her advocacy for endo and equally acknowledge her life apart from this chronic condition. Her tagline: “I have endo, but it doesn’t have me.”
“因为我没有听到这么多年,这是so important to me to claim my own voice, and to let others find theirs,” she says.
Becoming an Endo Warrior and Health Advocate
克里斯蒂娜（Christina）一直很积极地倡导他人，以至于她最近在2018年被评为“年度最佳英雄”Endo Marchin San Francisco.
She’s since changed her blog's name to "ImAprilChristina" (with her new tagline, “Finding purpose from your pain”), but her passion for making space for women with the disease shines as brightly as ever. At press time, she had over 4600 followers on Instagram.
In March 2019, she hosted her first Endo Brunch, to further extend her community of endo sisterhood. The event reached its 25-women maximum just two weeks after she announced it. She plans to make this an annual event.
Turning Endometriosis Pain Into Purpose
回顾过去，克里斯蒂娜（Christina）为她如何管理多年的苦难感到自豪，他周围没有人理解。她觉得自己无法应付任何不同的应对，吞咽了自己的感情和言语，只是将一只（疼痛）的腿放在另一个。
But she doesn’t want others to experience the loneliness and silence she did. Whatever direction life takes her next, she’s clear it will involve creating space to let other women with the disease speak their reality.
“To go from having no voice, because my condition wasn’t diagnosed for so long, to using my voice to influence others, is amazing,” she says. The women who follow her blog and posts and have come to her events would no doubt agree.
