Amanda Fisher's story

My name is Amanda Fisher and I’m 28 years old. I moved to Portugal when I was 25 with my family. I was single at the time and we moved there to start afresh and run a bar by the sea. At the start of the second season I met my boyfriend Johann who is French and was working in Portugal. It was love at first sight and we have been together four years. We had been together around five months when I knew I had endo; that’s when I started having pain during sex and general pains in my womb.

Some days they were so bad that I was in agony and would just cry and cry, so I went to see a doctor who gave me a scan and said I had a 4cm cyst on my ovary. He told me there was nothing I could do here, and that I would either have to go back home or see another doctor as he wasn’t sure what to do, he started getting all sorts of books out and I started to get worried as I was in a country that wasn’t my own.

"I was in agony

and would just

cry and cry"

I was stupid and ignored the pain and didn’t see anyone else as we had a busy bar to run and I just got on with things, I remember a few days before I was rushed to hospital I was in more pain than I could imagine. I couldn’t go to the toilet and just passing urine was pure agony. I didn’t want to drink or eat and it hurt just to sit down. I remember the night I went to hospital I had just finished a shift at the bar it was around 12 o’clock midnight and my boyfriend picked me up and I went to stay at his, I had been in pain all day and tried to sleep, at around 3am I woke up in so much pain I wanted to just die, I know it sounds awful but I just couldn’t do anything and screamed for my partner to take me to hospital.

He rushed me there and  I was so scared as I didn’t speak the language enough and he didn’t really know what to tell the doctors, I couldn’t even sit down on the chair as it felt like I was being stabbed in the womb. They took me to the scan room and did an internal which was so painful. I could see I was bleeding so I knew something was going on inside me that shouldn’t be apart from the pain!!

They told me something about my womb being full of blood and that they had to operate straight away. I didn’t care by then; I just said ‘please put me to sleep’ and that’s all I remember!

"I was stupid and

ignored the pain"

The next day I woke up and looked down to see massive white towelling over the area where you would have had a c-section, and I couldn’t move from the waist down because I had metal staples. My boyfriend arrived first and I was crying, asking him what had happened to me. He was very upset and said that they had to remove my ovary, I couldn’t believe it. It was a hard time as we had not been together that long and my boyfriend didn’t know what to do or say to make it better.

Later the doctors came and told me I had 8cm blood cyst on my ovary and it twisted and had ruptured so they had to remove my ovary and the cyst together. They said they didn’t know why this had happened but it may have been because I had come of the pill a while before. After this I got back to my life in the bar and just rested. It took a while to get back to normal and I couldn’t walk straight for quite a few weeks.

I started seeing a great doctor who would check my one ovary from time to time to see that everything was ok. She told me it would be very hard to have children, and I would need help with medication to get me pregnant. I hadn’t really thought  about children at this point -  my boyfriend already had a son and we were fine the way we were, but it changed me and made me want a baby.

I’m not sure I actually thought it through at the time. I started to be horrible to my partner, telling him we had to have a child now as I was scared if we didn’t I would never have one.

Amanda with her daughter, Lola

I look back and I don’t know what I felt, just desperate and scared of my future.

After a while I forgot about babies and enjoyed my relationship for a year or so until I knew I really wanted a child with my boyfriend. I went to see my doctor and she gave me a one off injection of hormones that she told me would make me go through a mini menopause but would help stimulate my ovary to release eggs. I had hot flushes about 20 times a day. It was very hard as it was summer in Portugal and hot enough as it was, but I got through it and started to try for a baby. We tried for a while and nothing happened but we didn’t pressure ourselves and just got on with our lives, we booked a small trip to go to the UK to see my family and I felt a little different.

I mentioned to my mum that I had a little thought I could be pregnant but after everything that had happened I didn’t think it would be that easy! She told me to get a test and when it was positive I was shocked - we all were. We flew to the UK and it went by in a daze. I look back now and see that I shouldn’t have gone and it was far too early in the pregnancy to fly. I got so stressed on the flight back as we were late that I started to bleed and I thought that was the end of the baby! I must have been about three weeks pregnant. I bled a little more once we got back to Portugal and I went straight to see my doctor Carla.

"My daughter makes

me so glad I went

through what I did"

She was so happy that I was pregnant and did a scan but I could see by her face she wasn’t happy anymore. She told us that it was a blighted ovum, which meant an empty sac with the hormone of a pregnancy. I was so upset, she told us to go home to wait and see if I miscarried or not. I gave it two weeks and had no further bleeding, so I booked to see Carla again and she did another scan. This time she saw a faint heart beat and told me that I was still pregnant and come back in another two months.

I went through a tough time in the nine months; I was very sick and lost weight instead of gaining. My kidney was swollen and I had to have painkiller injections to help at the late stages of pregnancy. I had my daughter Lola on the 11th of July 2007 by c-section. My blood pressure had been high and throughout the whole nine months I was so weak, so they induced me early. My daughter is now 18 months and I’m the happiest mum in the world. She’s my miracle and I still wonder how she got here after all I’ve been through, but she is and that makes me so glad I went through what I did. I still have cysts now and then; I had one on New Year’s Day 2009.  The doctors told me that I get fluid cysts and they get big and pop causing terrible pain, and all they can do is give me painkillers. I’m now moving back to the UK and need to restart with doctors and sort my problems out all over again. I’m still having pains and this month I’ve had two periods and both have been painful and difficult.

I’m proud of what I’ve been through and to have come out the other side. To have operations and a baby abroad is not an easy thing to do but I’ve done them and I’m here to tell the tale. My boyfriend has been supportive and has always tried to help me through endo as it’s not easy for men to understand the bleeding, the mood swings and the general discomfort we feel each month. I’ve got a good family and my mum has always been there for me no matter what has happened, and of course my baby daughter….