The language Cait Reeves uses to describe pain is truly unforgettable.

Cait lived with adenomyosis for years before she got a diagnosis, which came about through her determined efforts to get to the bottom of what was causing this intense pain. She used an analogy to describe to her doctor what the pain in her womb felt like: a garden trowel carving out the insides of a pumpkin.

Her doctor winced too.

Adenomyosis is a condition where the tissue in the lining of the uterus grows into the muscular wall of the uterus. It can cause a host of painful symptoms, including heavy bleeding and cramps, chronic pelvic pain and an enlarged uterus. Cait was told as a teenager that periods are painful, and that’s just the way it was. Finding the words to describe the intense pain she felt was important to her, and she talks about that in this week's episode - you can listen to her story, in her words, on the show this week.
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This was another listener-requested topic, from Natasha Clarke, who listens to Overlooked in the UK. A few months ago, Natasha wrote to me and asked - what is adenomyosis? At the time I didn't know anything at all about it, and it did take some looking around before I found this story from Cait (a big shoutout to Esther Tran-Le from MyAdvo for connecting us). Listening to Cait's story was eye-opening to say the least.

It made me think about the language we use to describe pain to our doctors, something that Gabrielle Jackson and I talked about in an earlier episode on endometriosis. This is the kind of topic that I'll come back to again on the show - I think there's much that's overlooked here.

Here’s more on adenomyosis from the Mayo Clinic, and from Johns Hopkins, but of course, if this is something you’re thinking about, please talk to your doctor.

What else I’ve been doing:

-Planning Ahead:

...For big changes in the Overlooked feed next year. If you’re coming to the virtual Overlooked Open House you’ll hear more! ​

-Leaving salty comments on Instagram:

I loved Wired. But they had a dumb headline on an Instagram post recently and I had to say something (through Overlooked’s IG account - are you following us on IG btw?). Also these visuals 🙄

-Stepping out of my comfort zone and making a video:

The OG audio girl made a video. For the Overlooked YouTube channel, which has a teeny tiny number of followers, but many more people are finding Overlooked content there through our Shorts feed, so I thought I’d give this a shot. How’d I do?

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-Listening, listening, listening:

If you’ve got some downtime over December and want to listen to podcasts that are both beautiful and useful - about health, healthcare and medicine - take a listen to these:

​The Nocturnists is one of my absolute favorite shows to listen to, and they’ve done some amazing episodes this year.

​What do you actually know about your metabolism? From Unexplainable.​

I'm going to force myself to listen to Diary of a CEO in December, which is currently doing a lot of women's health content, and it frankly irks me, so I want to be able to put that irritation into specific words 😅. Have you listened/ what do you think?

Wishing you the best of health,

Golda