January 17, 2016

Egg freezing: 1 year on

sylvia Egg Freezing, Mind Body Spirit, Uncategorized awareness, egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones, mind body spirit, motivation, pain, post egg retrieval, recovery, training 8 Comments

December 2015

Egg freezing, 1 year on. A little over 1 year ago I was bed ridden yet again, not from Endo directly but the threat of infertility made me decide to freeze my eggs just in case. Once the very few eggs I managed to produce were removed from my body I felt strangely sad, like maybe they’d never be there again, in the worst physical pain I’ve ever felt and utterly shattered. Knowing that after all my body had been through from egg freezing, I’d likely need to do it again to secure a decent amount of eggs.. Was depressing. I felt so lucky for the opportunity to use incredible technology and had a family that could afford it, but devastated that at 23 this was my life. I should be renting a flat, not freezer space for unborn children!
(more…)

January 8, 2015

EndoActive has gone troppo yo.

sylvia Media, Uncategorized activism, advocacy, awareness, change.org, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, feminism, genea, media 3 Comments

I am comin’ at you live from beneath the Pandanus. Although I’m currently in Noosa on holidays with my family, EndoActive HQ has traveled with us and is fully functioning in the tropics. We’ve literally gone troppo. So much exciting news to tell you so be sure to read to the bottom ok! First things first. Happy new year err’body. I hope this finds you well. It’s been so hectic up here organising the inaugural EndoActive consumer conference (eeee!!!) and getting in touch with lots of brave, enthusiastic EndoActive supporters from Brisbane & the Sunshine Coast who we’re going to interview and film while we’re up here. On top of that, A Current Affair popped in to see us. They were lovely. We ate Tim Tams together! I’ll tell you about that further down.

For those of you who aren’t aware, my Mum and I started EndoActive Australia & NZ a few months ago as a result of the publicity we were receiving after our petition on change.org went viral and received a whopping 74,500 signatures. You can check it out here. Now we are a non-profit, legally incorporated association which feels FANTASTIC and sounds very grown up and legit. We are so proud to have started this little thing from our living room and watched it grow and grow. Our mission is to promote education, awareness and activism about Endo as much as we can. We’ve already achieved a lot with the help of our fantastic supporters and have lots of exciting things in the pipeline. Mum has ideas coming out of her eyeballs, even while she’s asleep! She is an absolute powerhouse and I’m learning a lot. Together, we make a great team. We are currently planning the first ever consumer conference on Endo to be held in Sydney in the first half of 2015.

(more…)

November 6, 2014

Day 11 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing cosmo, egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones, pain 0 Comments

Here’s a video of me doing my final round of hormone injections. I developed a ‘bang bang bang’ method towards the end of my egg freezing process which basically means I lock and load up all the syringes with the solutions and medicines, replace the caps on the needles to ensure they’re 100% sterile, lay them out on the bathroom counter then BANG BANG BANG shoot em up one after the other. That may seem a little extreme to some and even warranted a “Oh Sylvie, NO!” from my mum but I didn’t do this for shock value I can assure you. I actually found this method safer for me for a number of reasons. Keep reading for more details on Day 11…

(more…)

November 1, 2014

Day 10 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing awareness, egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones 4 Comments

I LITERALLY LOOK LIKE A PREGNANT CLAUDIA SCHIFFER ON THE COVER OF VOGUE !

Maybe a little less Vogue, a little more Eminem chic…

(more…)

October 19, 2014

Day 7 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing egg freezing, endo, endometriosis, fertility, genea, medication 0 Comments

I don’t what I was thinking trying to G myself up to go out last night – I was in absolutely no fit state. Not even close. I was so tired and nauseous I could barely speak. I was like that all day but typical Syl, I seriously believed I’d simply snap out of it just in time. Regardless of what condition I’m in, I tend to have this vision of myself making a miraculous recovery where I look at the clock when it’s time to get ready (for going out, for uni assignment, for whatever it is) and leap out of bed still wearing my trackies and hoodie but suddenly feeling fantastic. Then I do a kind of ‘Genie in the bottle from Aladdin’ twirl which magically sprinkles on my makeup, poofs up and slicks back my hair, kits me out head to toe and sends me flying out the door in 2 seconds. It’s amazing. And delusional. Total denial.

(more…)

October 18, 2014

Day 6 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing dreams, egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones, medication, pain 0 Comments

You can see in this photo how swollen my belly is getting from all these injections and growing follicles…

I cannot even count the number of ex-boyfriends and phallic symbols or just blatant dicks in my dreams last night. (they came in many forms; dickheads, several dildos, people being dicks, actual dicks) Jesus Christ! (he isn’t a dick and did not appear in my dream) I actually woke up feeling a little embarrassed to be sleeping with myself like “woahh chill out girl!” When I got a glimpse of my reflection in my bedroom mirror my face was priceless – like I’d just been caught red-handed, mid-act doing something naughty. Except I’d been caught by myself. And it was just a dream… But dreams are rarely literal and I know that with a tiny bit of unpacking, it will be glaringly obvious what all the phallic stuff was for. Even as I type this it’s just so clear… hormones, the uncomfortable internal ultrasounds at Genea every few days with that cold, lubed up, phallic probe, creating potential new life in the most unnatural way possible – without a penis or sperm, all the “partner not applicable” sections I’ve had to scribble over forms, doing a (typically) couples thing on my own as a single 23 year old, making 50% of a baby in this clinical, unsexy environment, and yes sure my sex drive is in over drive … dozens of reasons.

(more…)

October 17, 2014

Day 5 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, fitness, genea, hormones, mind body spirit, training 0 Comments

Day in dot points today but you’ll be pleased to read it was a fantastic day. I had buckets full on energy and positive vibes and seriously no effects from the injections… just felt great!

(more…)

October 16, 2014

Day 4 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones 0 Comments

This morning I had my first ultrasound (and a blood test) at Genea. Despite being an internal ultrasound, (if you’ve never had one before you pretty much lie there looking at a screen where you can see all your reproductive organs in black and white while a lovely woman gently pokes around your insides with a huge lubricated, cylindrical, dildo-looking thing that has x-ray vision. It’s pretty amazing) it was totally fine. No discomfort, no pain. And fascinating!

(more…)

October 15, 2014

Day 3 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing egg freezing, emotions, endo, endoactive, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones 0 Comments

You will notice in the photo of my form that I have crossed out the “partner” section. In the beginning, every medical person who hadn’t bothered to read my file would always say things to me like “you and your partner” or “egg and sperm” or “IVF” or “you’ll make that decision together”… Uhh no! No husband. No partner. No sperm. No IVF. I’m 23, single and freezing my eggs on my own. Because I have Endo. And I want to empower myself and be proactive. I’m so sick of N/Aing and crossing out all the ‘partner’ sections. It’s just a bloody form but for some reason it makes me feel really lonely and isolated – like this is some sort of journey designed specifically for couples. And I’m not one. So I don’t quite fit.

(more…)

October 13, 2014

Day 1 egg freezing

sylvia Egg Freezing egg freezing, emotions, endo, endometriosis, fertility, genea, hormones, medication, mind body spirit 0 Comments

I was nervous this morning after being so emotional yesterday and basically dreading another day of tears but so far so good! Luckily for me I’m not scared of needles and don’t feel panicked by pain (so used to it) so thinking about the injections has not been distressing – more so the effect they might have on me, whether they’ll interfere with what I’ve got on every day, how they’ll make me feel, whether the huge doses of hormones will make my Endo worse… Things like that. (more…)