Elle Watmough reveals heartache over undiagnosed endometriosis
The wife of a former Sea Eagles player has revealed how an undiagnosed condition prevented her from having more children, as she warns other women to pester their GPs for tests.
Manly
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The wife of former Sea Eagles player Anthony Watmough has spoken about her heartache over a common condition that can cause infertility.
Elle, 31, of Fairlight, told the Manly Daily, she was only diagnosed with stage four endometriosis aged 24, after she Googled her symptoms and suggested it to her doctor.
She said for eight years she had suffered from excruciating pain in her pelvic area, back and legs, during her monthly cycle but was told she just had ‘bad periods’ and there wasn’t much that could be done about it.
She had also been tying to get pregnant for four years and had gone through multiple rounds of IVF.
“I want girls and women to know that menstruation pain shouldn’t be agonising, and if it is, then ask your doctor if it might be endometriosis or some other issue such as irritable bowel syndrome causing your pain,” Mrs Watmough said.
Endometriosis is when small amounts of the lining of the uterus finds its way into the abdominal cavity and sometimes attaches to pelvic organs including the ovaries, fallopian tubes, uterus, bladder, bowel and peritoneum. The tissue can then grow.
Her warning comes as the Gut Foundation released a new report on endometriosis, irritable bowel syndrome and chronic pelvic pain, which examines for the first time the common confusion and symptom crossover between these debilitating illnesses.
It’s believed a quarter of the adult female population suffers from chronic pelvic pain.
It can also cause infertility and problems conceiving.
Investigative surgery revealed Mrs Watmough had such bad endometriosis that some of her organs had fused together.
Following a seven-hour operation to remove the endometriosis, Mrs Watmough fell pregnant on her eleventh IVF cycle and her daughter Jagger, now aged four, was born.
“It would have saved me and my husband, Anthony, years of angst, heartache and many thousands of dollars had I been accurately diagnosed in the first place,” she said.
The former model and funeral director also revealed that Jagger was her sixth and final embryo and she sometimes thinks of those “beautiful embryos” that were wasted in the previous 10 IVF cycles.
As there is no cure for endometriosis she’s had three more procedures to remove further growth since the big operation.
While the couple have tried to conceive again after Jagger’s birth, they were unsuccessful and she could not bear to go through the whole IVF process again.
“I’m very happy to have my miracle,” Mrs Watmough told the Manly Daily.
The couple, who are renovating a cottage Fairlight, also have Mr Watmough’s 18-year-old son living with them.
Go to gutfoundation.com.au for more details.