Can New Research Validate Women’s Pain?
The X chromosome holds compelling answers to the autoimmune disease epidemic in women
For 20 years, Emily Kischell of California suffered “unrelentingly painful and gruesome periods” before doctors found an “excruciating” chocolate cyst — a cyst containing old blood, fluids, and semisolid materials — on her left ovary that required surgery. A surgeon had to untangle her “mangled-by-adhesions fallopian tube” from the scar tissue that is a hallmark of the autoimmune disease endometriosis, in which tissue that normally stays inside the uterus grows outside of it and can be extremely painful and interfere with menstruation and reproduction.
Kischell was relieved to receive a diagnosis after years of vague answers from doctors.
But after the birth of her first child, she was hit with months of “severe joint and muscle pain” that began with what she thought was a sore throat and would later be diagnosed as an inflamed thyroid gland. “I could barely walk, every bone in my feet felt on fire, and I could barely lift my tiny newborn,” Kischell said.
Now her doctors had no answers for her — except to say that some women experience pain after childbirth. “I was completely frustrated and felt utterly nuts,” Kischell recalls. “How could I be suffering this…
