My Unexplained Abdominal Pain: Part 1
The level of, and the type of pain I’m in currently, as I write this, would have me in the emergency room at the hospital. Oddly (but also not odd a year into my journey), this is the same pain I go to work with. My left waist is cramped up –it’s fucking screaming. I was in the kitchen performing light tasks when instant nausea took over, and the pain kicked in. My pain didn’t ease in; it hurled itself in.
I began understanding my pain about a year ago. More specifically, I was learning to understand what my pain meant:
Like, am I going to have to stay close to a toilet?
Am I going to blow the toilet up?
Or, is my body telling me to stop even the slightest movements entirely and call it a day?
The cramping and deep penetrating aches would have ended my day almost exactly one year ago.
I’ve never loved and despised my toilet more than I have over the past year. Is there such a thing as toilet trauma? Jokingly (but not really) rather, is it that I have a trauma bond with my toilet?
I’ve been placed on a three-month waitlist for a colonoscopy at the end of October 2025. Three months doesn’t sound all that bad, right? Here’s the thing: I’ve inquired about a colonoscopy since May 2025. (I’ve shared concerns of unexplained abdominal pain with rotating doctors at my local clinic since January 2025. The wait list for a family doctor in British Columbia was ten months after having moved from Alberta where I was already deep into the medical system for unrelated jaw pain.)
Three months is not that long. Despite this, my life has been put on hold several times since my first inquiry. This makes a three-month wait time seem like eons for someone who’s been advised for months of “other” condition possibilities. I would feel different (certainly less desperate) if I wasn’t being ran in circles around what it “could” be than taking the more obvious route from the start. If I had been referred for a colonoscopy (with pathology) starting in May, or thereinafter, I’d know by now whether a bowel/colon issue alone is the root cause of my pain. All ultrasounds, the CT scan and the MRI resulted in no clear concerns other than a possible urinary tract infection. (My partner and I travelled five hours and paid $2,400 CAD for a private MRI after initially being declined a referral for an MRI through the general healthcare system. When I inquired about a private MRI that’s when I was advised I could be put on the 1-2 year wait list for an MRI through general health.)
My partner, who’s a long-time mechanic said it to me best: you wouldn’t replace electronics in a vehicle as a “let’s see what happens” if nearly everything is pointing to a mechanical concern from the onset.
It’s preconceived that women’s organs are compact so pelvic and abdominal pain diagnoses are challenging. Lucky us; it can take decades of “I know my own body” to be effectively diagnosed.
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My first noticeable symptoms were abdominal pain, constipation and bloating. It was when I shared the symptoms of random throbbing around my anus and lightning pain shooting from the same area up to my chest, one of the rotating physicians was adamant that I should see a gynaecologist. At some point down the road that may’ve been fair given my added intensifying periods.
I’m on board with the theory that I could have a type of endometriosis –I know, that’s a generic fall back for women dealing with abdominal and pelvic pain, and so is Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS)… it’s been suggested that I could have IBS. Not only am I still awaiting a colonoscopy, I still have not been referred to a dietitian, or at least even recommended that I see one. I hadn’t a clue at the start of my unexplained abdominal pain journey that it was going to be up to me to look at alternative (centuries-old) options, like herbal medicine and Naturopathy. I barely knew what alternative medicine was until I was given the run-around about what my unexplained pain “could” be.
I’m grateful waking up each new day knowing the awareness of the misprioritization of women’s health is growing. This is an advocacy journey greater than just ourselves as one women’s health patient.