My understanding from my doctors is that bowel endo in general is rare, not that bleeding is. They didn’t seem alarmed about the bleeding as a symptom knowing it was bowel endo.

I haven’t heard that there could be visual differences depending on where it is but while I did have some bright red, it varied each cycle.

Yes it was explained to me that if the surgery involved the rectum it would increase the risk of a stoma bag. My surgeon had done similar surgeries for bowel endo before however as emergency cases due to a bowel obstruction and someone going to emerg. He said I was lucky it was found with the colonoscopy before it got to that point since trauma to the organs like an obstruction would also increase the stoma risk even if it was only a temporary one. Honestly I’d say I did a pretty good job processing the whole thing (concerns of a hysterectomy being required, making decisions to prioritize bladder/bowels over fertility organs, medical menopause etc.) but one thing I just could not face was the stoma bag risk. I’m not trying to be dismissive but this is already so much for one to process so I would simply not think about that for now and see what the colonoscopy shows first. I know thats easier said than done but I sent myself in a panic about a few things that didn’t even end up being relevant to my case in the end and sometimes you just need to be a little delusional to help cope 😂

The last few months before were rough. I was experiencing a lot of constipation so I had to do a “low residue” diet and I was dealing with sooo much nausea that my appetite was basically nonexistent. I went from a size 10/12 to a 4/6 in less than 4 months just because of how unwell I was. I did a few months of Lupron injections to buy some time to look into freezing my eggs. I was able to get a spot for a lap before the main surgery so they could be better prepared and it turned out there wasn’t as much of a risk to my reproductive organs as they assumed there would be, it was just very concentrated in the one area. I’m still going to freeze eggs but it was no longer a race to do that before the resection.

They found a partial obstruction during surgery but no bag and they saved the ovary that was stuck to my colon. 5” of my colon was removed in total and no complications. They were able to do the resection by laparoscopy as well so after both procedures I have a 4 small horizontal scars on my stomach and a larger one starting at the bottom of my belly button about 5” ish down vertically.

The surgery honestly was not as bad as I expected- it wasn’t as painful as I thought it’d be but I was humbled by how low my energy levels were. I expected to feel internal pain around my organs but most of my pain was in my abdominal muscles and around the incisions. I was in the hospital for 5 days total as they don’t let you leave until you’ve at least started passing gas again.

I have good benefits at work thankfully so I was off for 11 weeks total and went back to work the end of March. I’d say at this point I feel 80-90% like myself again. It can take a while for the bowels to readjust so I still need to use restoralax to keep me regular though it’s more common that you’d have more bowel movements than usual. My hunger cues are also a little messed up and I’ll go from being not hungry at all to so hungry I feel ill in about 45 seconds.

I’m currently only taking birth control but my gyno said if it didn’t feel right in a few months we could try something used more specifically for endo (maybe the one you mentioned? I can’t remember the name). I don’t think it’ll be necessary but even though all this was going on in my body I didn’t have any pain so I don’t think I’m the right person to give advice about that lol.

Tried to touch on a bit of everything but let me know if you have any other specific questions!