Hi there and Happy March!
I saw Bob Woodruff on TV last night, (he's the anchorman who nearly had his head blown off in Iraq last year), and he was in amazing shape. I couldn't believe how well he had recovered, especially when I saw a picture of him without part of his skull. I just wanted to take a minute and give out a big Oo Rah to all of the phenomenal military surgeons, nurses, corpsmen, and the entire group that is keeping our fighting soldiers and sailors alive and well over there. Most people may not know this, but most of the major advances in trauma care and surgical intensive care medicine have come from the battlefields. So, I'm proud to come from a military background (my dad was a cook in the Navy in WWII), and proud to have served in the Navy, and to have trained at Bethesda Naval Hospital. Stateside and peacetime military medicine may have some flaws, but if I was in Bob Woodruff's shoes with a major head injury, there's nobody in the world I'd rather see than the Navy or Army docs and crews.
Now to endometriosis.....
I'm having fun doing all these bowel cases. It's really true that endometriosis follows repetetive patterns, hanging out in nearly the same spots in most people. Once you get the hang of looking for important structures like ureters (the tubes that bring the urine from the kidneys down to the bladder), and you learn how to separate them from the fibrous web of scar tissue woven by the endometriosis-driven silk worms (just kidding - no worms, just scar tissue), and you figure out how to do all this without injuring the large vessels carrying blood to and from your legs that live just beneath all the endometriosis/fibrosis/scarred in junk, then the only thing left to do is to take the endo off the bowel wall, sew it up, and be done. That's a little like saying, "just give the space shuttle a little tune-up". Easier said than done. But, with practice and a great teacher (Dr. Redwine), it truly is getting easier.
The hard part is convincing the scientific establishment that endometriosis can be cured by removing it from the body. They all want to cover it up by giving Lupron, and now aromatase inhibitors. All that does is suppresses the activity of the endometriosis cells for a while, and lessens their ability to produce all those little biologically active molecules that cause pain, then when your menopause (induced by the Lupron) gets better, your pain gets worse again. I really think they don't want to admit that if endometriosis can be cured by surgical excision, then we need better surgeons than we have in general gynecology, and that 4 years of residency for learning all of obstetrics, office gynecology, surgical gynecology, and primary care (thrust on our specialty about 10 years ago for dubvious reasons) is just Not Long Enough to train excellent surgeons. I can truly understand the frustration of many of our patients who have been told "there's nothing we can do for you" by doctor after doctor.
Well, time to get off my soap box.
If you have issues related to endo, pelvic pain, incontinence, or women's health in general that you would like me to address, please let us know.
Take care, and have a great week.
Dr. Mos