It's a breezy October day in the year 2017, and I'm sitting in the doctor's room alone with my thoughts. 'Finally,' I think, 'I'm going to get some answers.' You see, I've had enough of suffering in silence and playing a tough guy for a while; things haven't been right for about a year now, and I needed to get help, so there I was, sitting and hoping for a diagnosis. I had left work early, my mom took me to the doctor, and things would just fall into place because it always did. The doc would come in, hear me out, and she'd know immediately what the cause was after a quick pelvic exam. Maybe I'd need an ultrasound, but that was the extent, right?

Well, not quite. The doctor came in and I gave her my list of symptoms (I wrote them all down on a piece of paper, listing how long it's been going on and what it felt like, too), and she seemed puzzled. The questions she asked, I knew she was dancing around a disease called endometriosis because what she asked was what I saw frequently on reliable websites (I will leave my personal thoughts on this out because I'd rather not self-diagnose, no matter how sure I am), but then the conversation moved from pain to hormones and suddenly I need to check the hormones in my blood. The closest thing I got to an answer was 'dysmenorrhea' which is doctor lingo for painful periods. Did I mention that there are two kinds of dysmenorrhea - primary and secondary? Now I have further questions!

I went in hoping for answers and left with 'we don't know what's wrong with you' and I realize I'm being selfish for being impatient, but I'm not sure how much I've been helped. It's the first step in getting help, but I'm frustrated. I went in for pain but I left needing to get my blood taken for a different issue. The doc gave me a prescription for ibuprofen but frankly, that didn't do much except for mask what I've been feeling. My symptoms are more than just the typical consequences of a bad menstrual cycle, and just because I don't look exactly like one person with a disease doesn't mean I don't have it. In a way, I don't feel listened to because while my symptoms are typically what one gets during their period, mine are getting worse all of a sudden while I have made no major changes to my life (I drink more water more regularly and walk everywhere... wow!). I feel like a child again; before I even had birth control, my period ran my life and I couldn't plan for it; I'd rather not go back to that life. But if I have to go back to the doctor and say, 'nothing is working and I'm really at my limit here; just listen to me' without a doubt I'm going to. This isn't my imagination at play; when it comes to my reproductive organs, I want to know if I'll be able to have kids someday, and I feel a clock ticking and time running out on that.

"It takes years to find a diagnosis sometimes," has never felt more real. Maybe because nothing's ever really been wrong with me (my worst thing was eczema), having the need to do further tests on me is an unsettling answer to get. My annoyance and frustration isn't toward the medical personnel or my doctor because I know they're going to lend me a hand if they can; I just know something is wrong physically, and I want it over with.