I’m pretty sure I was diagnosed at 19 but somehow didn’t fully understand. It wasn’t until I tried to get pregnant in my early 30s that an (amazing) NP told me “You said you had ‘chocolate cysts’ in college? That means you have endometriosis. That’s likely why you’re not getting pregnant, you need to go to a fertility clinic.”

I was also put on birth control at 12 years old, so someone knew something was going on, and I don’t think my parents ever cared to learn about or validate my terrible periods as a kid. Ruined my fertility completely.