Meet Our #COTW Jeanina Joseph – ‘Don’t Stop Until You’re Content With What Your Doctor Tells You’
Emily Thorpe is a writer and editorial assistant out of…
Before our #WCW Jeanina Joseph received an official Endometriosis and Adenomyosis diagnosis, she was a student, women’s healthcare advocate, and an administrator at Mount Sinai in New York.
The diagnosis was a long time coming for Joseph, who said she began experiencing symptoms at the age of 16. She was plagued with debilitating cramps, heavy bleeding, and clotting. And like many of the #EndoSisters we know, she thought she was just unlucky when it came to her cycle.
“I thought, like many women, I was just the one in my female group with the ‘bad period.’ For years I didn’t think much of it.”
She tried to ignore her symptoms until she was forced to have a colposcopy after receiving an abnormal pap smear. (It was 2007; Joseph was 21 at the time.) The colposcopy caused Joseph to develop unbearable pelvic spasms. Rectal spasms followed, but her doctors brushed it off, so she did, too.
“All they found were some small cysts,” Joseph said. “I was prescribed medicine for my heavy periods and was told it wasn’t anything.”
Unsatisfied with her care and treatment plan, Joseph took it upon herself to find out what could be happening to her body.
Her search led her to NYU. After her physical exam provided no clues, her doctor decided to do a pelvic MRI, which that eventually revealed Adenomyosis. While going over her options (one of which included having a hysterectomy), her doctor told her that the likelihood of Endometriosis also being present was a possibility.