CT Endo Warriors

09/01/2026

Waiting for an appointment and for diagnostics is brutal. Especially if you have had a major delay in diagnosis and treatment. I am scared as to what my physical future looks like.

08/31/2026

I completely understand why I wasn’t seen by the doctor. The office manager was kind. I understand that I would mess up other patients appointments. I am so mad at myself. I waited over three months for this appointment. I need to figure out what direction I am going in. There are only 3 specialists in the world that understand endometriosis and all the damage it does. I just need diagnostics run to proceed with getting surgical opinions. 🤦🏼‍♀️

08/31/2026

08/31/2026

Pulling and tugging pelvic pain with endometriosis... 🫯💢💥🩸

Gentle reminder: I’m a husband learning alongside my wife, who lives with stage IV endo, adeno, and fibro. This is not medical advice but my own research and a wish to understand. Thank you! 💛

You may describe your pain as though something inside is pulling when you stand upright, turn in bed, stretch, have s*x or open your bowels.

It does not feel like a cramp.

It feels mechanical.

That pulling sensation is commonly described by women with endometriosis, particularly when adhesions, fibrosis, pelvic-floor guarding or sensitive structures are present.

But the sensation itself cannot tell you whether adhesions exist.

Why tissues can feel as though they are tugging

Pelvic organs normally have some mobility.

The bladder expands.

The bowel moves.

The uterus changes position.

The ovaries are not permanently fixed like bolts in a machine.

Fibrosis or adhesions can reduce that mobility and create tension when structures move relative to each other.

Deep endometriosis may also create thick fibrotic tissue around lesions, while muscles can guard around painful structures and produce their own pulling sensations.

You may notice:

• pulling low on one side
• tugging behind the uterus
• a stretching sensation into the groin
• pain when standing fully upright
• pulling with bowel movements
• pain with deep pe*******on
• discomfort turning in bed
• pulling around a surgical scar
• a sensation that one internal area “will not move”

None of those symptoms proves adhesions.

Muscle tension, abdominal-wall nerves, bowel distension, scar tissue and other musculoskeletal problems can feel similar.

One small thing you can try today is to record which movement creates the pull.

Do not write only “pelvic pulling.”

Write:

• standing from sitting
• extending the hip
• twisting
• bending
• deep pe*******on
• full bladder
• bowel movement
• stretching the abdomen
• walking uphill
• turning in bed

Then add the exact location.

A movement-specific map can help distinguish a mechanical pattern from a pain that appears independent of movement.

What you may not realise about adhesions?

Adhesions do not all look alike.

Some are thin, filmy connections.

Others are dense fibrous bands that strongly tether organs.

Some cause no obvious symptoms.

That is why “I feel pulling, therefore I have adhesions” is too simple.

Likewise, surgery showing severe adhesions does not prove every pain came from them.

What imaging may show?

Ultrasound or MRI may suggest reduced mobility, fixed ovaries or obliteration of normal pelvic spaces.

Dynamic ultrasound can sometimes examine whether structures slide normally.

However, not every adhesion can be directly visualised.

Surgery provides a direct view of anatomy but should not be performed simply to prove that a pulling sensation is real.

Treatment decisions should consider the whole clinical picture.

One small question can help:

“What structure is being pulled when I do this movement?”

You may not know.

Your clinician may not know immediately either.

That uncertainty is okay.

The goal is to investigate rather than turn one sensation into a conclusion.

What can help practically?

Depending on the cause:

• change positions gradually during severe flares
• avoid repeatedly stretching until the pull becomes sharp
• treat constipation when bowel distension worsens pressure
• use pelvic physiotherapy when muscle guarding contributes
• pace movements that reliably trigger a prolonged flare
• ask about scar or abdominal-wall involvement if the pull sits near surgery sites
• use movement to maintain function without turning pain into a test of determination

Physiotherapy cannot simply stretch apart dense internal adhesions.

It can still help surrounding muscles, movement patterns and function.

That distinction protects you from unrealistic claims.

What surgery can do?

When adhesions or fibrotic endometriosis are important treatment targets, surgery may release tethered tissues.

But surgery also causes tissue injury and can itself contribute to new adhesions.

This does not make surgery pointless.

It means another operation should have a clear objective.

Ask:

• What anatomical target are you treating?
• Which symptom do you expect this to improve?
• What are the risks of new scar tissue?
• Are there non-surgical contributors to the pulling pain?
• How will we judge whether treatment helped?

When pulling becomes sudden severe pain?

A familiar chronic tugging sensation is different from sudden severe abdominal or pelvic pain.

Seek urgent medical assessment for sudden severe pain, fainting, repeated vomiting, fever, very heavy bleeding, inability to pass stool or gas, inability to urinate or pain and bleeding when pregnancy is possible.

Do not assume an acute emergency is “just an adhesion pulling.”

The emotional part of feeling internally stuck...

Words like stuck, tethered and frozen can change the relationship you have with your body.

You may stop moving because you imagine every stretch damaging something.

Please do not let anatomical language automatically become fear of movement.

My wife’s frozen pelvis taught me how real extensive adhesions can be, but it also taught me that understanding anatomy should support safer movement and treatment decisions rather than make you terrified of your own body.

This does not mean you should push through every pain.

It means pulling is information, not proof of damage occurring each time you feel it.

You deserve to understand what is happening in your body.

Here is what can help: record the exact movement that creates the sensation, distinguish scar pulling from deep pelvic pain, ask whether mobility has been assessed, keep muscle and bowel contributors in the conversation, and be cautious with anyone promising to physically “break up” internal adhesions without evidence.

Save this for the next time somebody asks whether your pain is sharp or aching and neither word explains the feeling of something pulling inside. Share this with a woman who has been searching for language for that deep tugging sensation.

My free 130+ page eBook, “You Did Nothing To Deserve This!”, was written for the days when unfamiliar pain sensations make you question whether your description sounds legitimate. Tap the link in my profile or bio to get it. The paperback is available on Amazon; just type “endometriosis validation” into Amazon’s search tab.

Lucjan 🎗

08/28/2026

Can endometriosis threatens your lungs? ⁉️🫁🫧🩸

GENTLE REMINDER: I’m a husband learning alongside my wife, who lives with stage IV endo, adeno, and fibro. This is not medical advice but my own research and a wish to understand. THANK YOU! 💛

If you have ever felt chest pain, shoulder pain, breathlessness, rib pain, or a strange bubbling sensation around your period and wondered, “Can endometriosis really affect this part of my body too?” I want you to know that the question is not unreasonable.

Thoracic endometriosis is real. It is uncommon compared with pelvic endometriosis, but it can affect structures inside the chest, especially the diaphragm and pleura, the thin lining around the lungs. In rarer cases, it can involve lung tissue itself.

What makes this so confusing is that the symptoms can feel completely disconnected from what you were taught endometriosis is supposed to look like. So when pain suddenly appears in your chest, ribs, shoulder, upper back, or neck, you may start doubting yourself. Please do not dismiss a pattern just because it seems unusual.

One of the biggest clues is timing. You may notice that certain chest or upper-body symptoms repeatedly appear just before your period, during the first days of bleeding, or around the same point in your cycle month after month.

You may notice:

• sharp or aching chest pain
• pain under the ribs
• shoulder, shoulder-blade, neck, or upper-back pain
• shortness of breath or difficulty taking a deep breath
• coughing around menstruation
• pressure or tightness in the chest
• bubbling or crackling sensations near the ribs
• symptoms that are worse on one side
• episodes that settle and return with another period
• in rarer cases, coughing up blood

This does not mean every one of these symptoms is thoracic endometriosis. Chest pain and breathing symptoms have many possible causes. What matters is that a repeatable cycle-linked pattern deserves to be mentioned clearly to a qualified health professional.

The best-known emergency pattern is catamenial pneumothorax. “Catamenial” means related to menstruation, and “pneumothorax” means air has entered the space around the lung, allowing part or all of the lung to collapse. These episodes often happen close to the start of menstruation, commonly within about 72 hours, and are reported more often on the right side.

Thoracic endometriosis can also irritate the diaphragm or pleura, and blood can sometimes collect in the chest. What matters is understanding why symptoms can show up somewhere that feels far away from the pelvis.

The diaphragm sits beneath your lungs. Irritation there can sometimes create pain felt in the shoulder because of the way nerves carry signals. So period-linked shoulder pain is not always coming from the shoulder joint itself. Sometimes the body refers pain from one area to another.

That is one reason symptom tracking can be so useful.

Here is what can help if you are experiencing repeat symptoms and you are medically stable enough to track them:

• write down the exact cycle day when symptoms begin
• record which side hurts
• note whether deep breathing, coughing, movement, or lying down changes the pain
• record breathlessness, dizziness, cough, shoulder-tip pain, rib pain, or unusual chest sensations
• note how long the episode lasts
• record whether the same pattern happened in previous months
• keep dates of previous scans or emergency visits together

One small thing you can try today is creating a note on your phone called “Chest symptoms and cycle.” For example: “Day 1 of period. Right-sided chest pain started at 6am. Worse on deep breathing. Right shoulder aching. Short of breath walking upstairs. Similar episode last month.”

That kind of note can be more useful than trying to remember everything while you are anxious, exhausted, or hurting. It gives your doctor timing, location, triggers, and repetition in one clear picture.

Doctors may use chest X-rays or CT scans during acute symptoms, MRI when diaphragmatic disease is suspected, and in selected cases VATS surgery to inspect the chest. Treatment is individual and can involve hormonal therapy, surgery, diaphragm repair, pleural procedures, or coordinated gynaecology and thoracic care.

You do not need to arrive at an appointment demanding a diagnosis. You are allowed to ask a clear question: “I am not saying I know what this is, but these symptoms repeatedly happen around menstruation and I have endometriosis. Could the timing be clinically relevant?”

That is a reasonable question.

If you have spent months or years being told that chest symptoms were anxiety, stress, muscle pain, asthma, reflux, or “probably nothing,” remember that some of those explanations may be correct. Anxiety can cause very real physical symptoms. But anxiety should not become a shortcut when there is a consistent physical pattern that has not been properly explored.

You deserve to understand what is happening in your body.

I also do not want this post to make you frightened every time you feel a twinge in your ribs. The aim is not to make you scan your body for danger. It is to help you recognise when a pattern deserves attention and when symptoms need urgent care.

Please seek urgent medical help for sudden or severe chest pain, significant trouble breathing, fainting or near-fainting, rapidly worsening symptoms, blue or grey lips, or coughing up blood. Do not wait for a symptom diary or routine appointment if your breathing feels seriously affected.

If symptoms are not an emergency but keep returning, especially around your cycle, bring that pattern to your doctor. Persistent, new, worsening, or unexplained chest symptoms deserve proper assessment whether endometriosis is the cause or not.

Validation does not require someone to immediately agree with the diagnosis you fear. It can simply mean your symptoms are taken seriously, the pattern is documented, dangerous causes are considered, and you are not made to feel foolish for asking a sensible question about your own body.

Living with endometriosis can teach you to minimise yourself. You get used to adjusting plans, pushing through pain, wondering whether something is “bad enough” to mention, and apologising for symptoms you never chose. When something happens outside the pelvis, that self-doubt can become even stronger.

But noticing your symptoms carefully is not being dramatic. Keeping records is not wasting anyone’s time. Asking whether timing matters is not overreacting. This does not mean you have failed. It means you are trying to understand what your body may be telling you.

Save this for the next time you need to explain a chest or shoulder pattern clearly, and share it with a woman who keeps mentioning rib, shoulder, or breathing symptoms around her period. Sometimes the most useful thing we can give one another is the language to describe something we have struggled to explain.

And if endometriosis has made you question yourself so many times that you need something gentle to come back to, my FREE 130+ page eBook “You Did Nothing To Deserve This!” was written around endometriosis validation and the emotional weight of not always being believed. You can find it by tapping the link in my profile or bio. If you prefer the physical paperback, it is available on Amazon; simply type “endometriosis validation” into the Amazon search tab.

Lucjan 🎗

08/15/2026

How endometriosis causes fibrosis? ❔️🧬🔬🔍

Gentle reminder: I’m a husband learning alongside my wife, who lives with stage IV endo, adeno, and fibro. This is not medical advice but my own research and a wish to understand. Thank you! 💛

You may hear a surgeon describe endometriosis as “fibrotic,” say that tissues were stuck together, or explain that a deep nodule felt hard and scar-like. It can sound as though fibrosis is simply another word for an adhesion or an old lesion.

It is more specific than that.

Fibrosis is the excessive build-up of connective tissue, especially collagen and other components of the tissue framework your body normally uses for repair. In endometriosis, repeated inflammation, bleeding, tissue injury and repair signals can encourage a wound-healing response that does not switch off neatly.

Over time, some lesions become increasingly fibrotic, stiff and less flexible.

That process matters because endometriosis is not only about glands and bleeding. In deep disease especially, much of a nodule can consist of fibrosis and smooth-muscle-like tissue surrounding smaller areas of endometriosis.

How normal healing becomes fibrosis?

When tissue is injured, fibroblasts help produce collagen and other structural material. Some become more active myofibroblasts that contract tissue and produce extracellular matrix. With persistent inflammatory and repair signalling, too much matrix can accumulate and tissue becomes thicker, harder and less mobile.

Researchers are studying the roles of myofibroblasts, platelets, macrophages, sensory nerves, TGF-beta, repeated bleeding, iron-related stress and hormonal signals. This is a network, not one single chemical causing the whole disease.

Fibrosis is not exactly the same as adhesions!

Fibrosis happens within or around tissue as excess scar-like matrix builds up. An adhesion is a band or sheet of tissue that connects surfaces that would normally be separate.

The two can occur together. Endometriosis may become fibrotic while also contributing to adhesions that tether an o***y, bowel, uterus or pelvic sidewall.

You may therefore hear an operation report describe both “dense fibrosis” and “adhesions.”

What fibrosis can do to anatomy?

Fibrosis can make a deep lesion firm, reduce tissue flexibility, pull structures together, distort normal tissue planes, contribute to an organ becoming fixed and make surgery more difficult. None of this means every fibrotic lesion produces severe pain. Pain still depends on location, nerves, inflammation, organ function and sensitisation.

Why deep endometriosis can feel hard?

Deep endometriosis may contain substantial fibromuscular tissue. This helps explain why surgeons sometimes describe a hard nodule rather than a soft patch of tissue.

The bowel, uterosacral ligaments, va**na, bladder or pelvic sidewall may become involved in this fibrotic response. Normal tissue planes can be distorted, especially after years of disease or previous surgery.

That is one reason complex endometriosis surgery requires anatomy to be identified carefully rather than simply “burning away spots.”

What you may notice?

Fibrosis itself cannot be diagnosed from a sensation, but altered anatomy may be associated with deep pulling, pain with pe*******on or bowel movements, bladder symptoms, movement pain or persistent pelvic aching. These symptoms also have other possible causes. Your body might be trying to tell you that movement or tissue pressure matters, not that you can feel collagen forming.

One small thing you can try today is, if you have an operation or imaging report, look for words such as:

• fibrosis
• fibrotic nodule
• adhesions
• tethering
• obliteration
• fixed o***y
• thickening
• retraction
• stenosis or narrowing
• muscular infiltration

Do not diagnose yourself from the language. Instead, write down which structure each word refers to.

For example:

“Fibrotic nodule — uterosacral ligament.”
“Adhesion — left o***y to pelvic sidewall.”
“Thickening — re**al wall.”

That turns frightening medical vocabulary into a clearer anatomical picture.

Questions to ask your clinician... You might ask:

• Is this finding fibrosis, an adhesion, active-looking endometriosis, or a mixture?
• Which structure has lost normal mobility?
• Is any organ narrowed or functionally affected?
• Does fibrosis change the surgical approach?
• What alternatives exist if surgery is not appropriate?

Can hormones remove fibrosis?

Hormonal treatments can reduce endometriosis-associated pain for many women and may suppress hormonal activity around disease, but established fibrotic tissue is not simply dissolved by lowering oestrogen.

Surgery can remove or release fibrotic disease in selected cases, but it can also lead to postoperative adhesions. That is why repeated surgery is never a trivial decision.

What about anti-fibrotic treatments?

Researchers are studying pathways involved in fibrosis, including TGF-beta signalling, platelets, macrophages, iron-related stress and other targets.

This is scientifically promising, but there is currently no simple supplement or routine anti-fibrotic medicine proven to dissolve endometriosis fibrosis safely.

Be cautious when a product claims to “break down scar tissue,” “melt adhesions,” or reverse deep endometriosis through diet or enzymes. Laboratory mechanisms and proven human treatment are not the same thing.

You did not create fibrosis by failing to stretch, eating inflammatory foods, being stressed or waiting too long to seek help.

Seek prompt medical advice for persistent urinary changes, severe flank pain, repeated vomiting, significant bowel obstruction symptoms, new neurological changes, or rapidly worsening pain. Urgent symptoms should not be watched at home because you assume fibrosis explains them.

The emotional side of scar-like disease...

The word fibrosis can make you imagine your entire pelvis slowly becoming scar tissue. That is not a fair picture of every endometriosis case.

Some disease is superficial, some ovarian, some deep and fibrotic, and severity differs greatly.

My wife’s stage IV endometriosis taught me how frightening the words “adhesions,” “frozen pelvis” and “fibrosis” can sound when you are the person imagining what is happening inside your body. Understanding the biology does not make the disease easy, but it can replace vague fear with better questions.

This does not mean you have failed because your anatomy became altered. Fibrosis is a biological repair process becoming excessive, not evidence that you did not care for yourself correctly.

You deserve to understand what is happening in your body. Here is what can help: separate fibrosis from adhesions, ask which structure is affected, ask whether function is threatened, understand the purpose of any proposed surgery, and be cautious with products promising to dissolve scar tissue.

Save this for the next time “fibrotic endometriosis” appears in a report and nobody explains what the word actually means. Share this with a woman who needs science that informs her without turning her pelvis into something she should fear.

My free 130+ page eBook, “You Did Nothing To Deserve This!”, was written for the moments when medical language becomes another source of blame or fear. Tap the link in my profile or bio to get it. The physical paperback is available on Amazon; simply type “endometriosis validation” into Amazon’s search tab.

Lucjan 🎗