I go to bed early so I can actually try to get a chance to sleep during the night and then in the morning I will try to shower and where a casual black dress that is loose fitting with leggings and wear therma care heat pads on my lower abdomen and take a half a pill of vicoden once I get to work. I also try to take my chai tea for breakfast and I don't leave my desk until it's time to go home. I will literally roll my chair into meetings if someone really needs me and go home the minute my time is up. I don't ever talk about how I'm feeling at work so that I can get my mind as far away from pain as I possibly can because my mental state is just as important as physical.

I just take my pain medicine and go to work. I'm a pharmacy technician so I have little mats i can stand on that help. There was one store I went to that didn't have mats and after about 3 hours, I almost started to bawl my eyes out. The thing with my pain medicine is, I need to eat with it or else I'll get sick so I couldn't take another pill until lunch. Also at my work we have this thing where if you're disabled or you need some sort of item to make your job easier, you can apply for some disability thing. So I've thought about applying to get a chair to sit on because we are not allowed to have chairs in the pharmacy and my two 15 minute breaks and 1 30 minute lunch in my 10 hour day isn't enough sitting sometimes. I've never called in because of my endometriosis because I feel like that's a dumb excuse, unfortunately. I had a boss once who used to give me so many problems for calling in when I was physically sick (cold,flu) that even at my new job, I get nervous. My pharmacy manager also has endometriosis (she had a hysterectomy last month) but she acts like such a badass. No hormone replacement therapy, no pain meds. She did get depo and zoladex for a little while actually but as for an oral medicine for pain or adback therapy, she refuses to. I also wear a salonpas patch or a heating patch and have inserts in my shoes. Sometimes the pain pill, salonpas/heating pads, and mats don't help though. But I'm starting to get used to being in pain 24/7. It's very short periods of time that I'm not actually in pain, I'm almost always in pain.

I typically miss one day a month because I am so ill. Be it to weakness or the pain. Being a teacher it is virtually impossible to function due to the cloudy thinking and watching the kids let alone teaching them. No one gets the cloudy thinking as it just looks like I'm forgetful but they don't realize it is much more than that.

I had to sign up for FMLA because I missed work so much. I don't take any strong pain meds because I am super sensitive to side effects. I'm only 90 lbs. So I drink camomile tea. Sometimes a Tylenol 500mg if pain is unbearable but by that time I'm so out of it I can't even walk. So I stay in bed and have to call in.

I am the manager of a bottle shop. I'm pretty lucky because the shop used to be a gym so there's a lot of facilities. I spend most my days either curled over with a hot water bottle under my clothes or an ice pack around my neck and abdomen. I drink lots of hot chocolates and hope I can survive an 8 hour shift. I usually spend most of that time sitting on a chair crying from the pain or on the loo 😂😔