Saturday, February 13, 2010

Puberty and Abdominal Pain in Girls

As a girl moves into womanhood, her body undergoes many changes. Puberty often brings with it excitement, mixed with a bit of anxiety. When a young girl begins her menstrual cycles, she may wonder what she did to deserve such a huge annoyance!

And to think it will happen every month! It's enough to make a young girl want to hide in her bedroom during those dreadful days when her body does its own thing, completely beyond her control.

Many young women not only experience annoyance, they also experience pain. Most cramps can be relieved by over the counter medications, but what about pain that seems completely abnormal?

Any young woman who is experiencing severe pain, nausea (maybe even vomiting) and back pain could have something going on outside of typical menstrual cramps.

Endometriosis is an illness that makes a billboard appearance...just about every woman knows what endometriosis is: displaced tissue that begins implanting into areas of the body where it does not belong, wreaking havoc on one's life.

In severe cases of suspected endometriosis, the doctor may insist on medications that will place the body in a menopausal state, effectively stopping menstrual cycles, which causes the endometrial implants to stop growing and shrink. In effect, to stop your pain.

But, not so fast. Before offering up your hip to these injections, consider an illness that has barely made a postage stamp appearance in the world. Adhesions.

Adhesions are bands of internal scar tissue that often cause organs to become fused together. Though a large segment of the population has never heard of adhesions, it is an all too common problem and one which doctors are all too familiar with. However, most doctors rarely mention the disorder.

Ovarian cysts can result in adhesion formation. Endometriosis can also cause adhesions to form, though we don't hear a lot about this subsequent and often disabling condition that can be the actual culprit behind cases of pain, nausea, vomiting, back pain, etc.

Scar tissue--adhesions--can be disabling to the person whose female organs are fused together due to the formation of this scar tissue. In my daughter's case, not only were her female organs fused, but so was her bowel, liver, diaphragm, stomach, etc.

In fact, endometriosis played very little part in the excruciating pain she endured for years, though one doctor insisted her pain was only endo related. (Thankfully, we kept searching for an answer).

While the medical world remains "perplexed and baffled" by the mysteries of the well known illness--endometriosis--and a staggering number of women are told their health related ills are only endometriosis (for which there is little hope of relief), there is another illness that lurks in darkness, robbing untold numbers of their heath and general well being. That illness is adhesions. May the billboard be erected!

By : Karen_Steward

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