Today I’m speaking with Kimether Redmon about: -Trauma-informed medical care. -Some biases a person may face in the medical setting. -Personal biases that Kimether has faced. Who is Kimether Redmon? She is an endometriosis patient as well as a Family Nurse Practitioner serving low-income uninsured patients in her area. Before her nursing career, she was a research consultant with a background in brain injury research, and employment. Being diagnosed...

Today I’m speaking with Kimether Redmon about: -Tips to improve our medical appointments -How to maximize the short amount of time we have with the practitioner. -How to be more specific when describing our symptoms -Our personal experiences with uncomfortable medical settings. Who is Kimether Redmon? She is an endometriosis patient as well as a Family Nurse Practitioner serving low-income uninsured patients in her area. Before her nursing career, she...

Today we speak with Dr. Shilpa Rao, who is a dentist by profession and an endo crusader by passion. Shilpa has a YouTube channel called The Endometriosis Crusader in which she interviews patients and professionals about various topics related to endometriosis and reproductive health. Shilpa shares about her personal experiences with cultural and social barriers to care, as well as her hopes for endometriosis care in the future in India. Clickable links at...

We continue to talk about work accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In part 2, we discuss medical documentation, examples of what are reasonable vs unreasonable accommodations, and telework. DISCLAIMER: We are not employment lawyers or disability civil rights attorneys. This is a general discussion of what we've been learning for our own individual work situations and is not legal advice. We encourage you to double check all information we give in this episode...

We are going to talk about work accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act. In part 1, we discuss what accommodations are vs accessibility in general, who qualifies for accommodations under the ADA, and some ideas on how and when to request accommodation. DISCLAIMER: We are not employment lawyers or disability civil rights attorneys. This is a general discussion of what we've been learning for our own individual work situations and is not legal advice. We encourage you to...

Until his retirement in 2012, Dr. David Redwine headed the world-renowned and award-winning Oregon Institute of Endometriosis at St. Charles Medical Center, Bend, Oregon, treating thousands of people with endometriosis via excision surgery from all across the US, Canada, and beyond. His research is on the website endopaedia.info and has been vital to the endometriosis community, helping empower and educate both patients and physicians alike. He has presented his theory of origin of endo,...

Many people regret having spent thousands of dollars on naturopathy, coaches, and functional medicine that didn’t help them, that they could have instead spent on excision surgery, a registered dietitian, pelvic floor therapy, SIBO treatment with a gastroenterologist, or other types of doctors/treatment. Today Amy speaks with Kate Boyce (she/her) on common red flags to look out for in wellness culture. Kate is a board certified patient advocate and endometriosis patient herself. She is...

We interview Dr Dulemba, an excision surgeon who has been in private practice in Denton, Texas, since 1986. For the past 20 years, he’s been testing the hormone receptors of endometriosis lesions. Today we discuss his findings and thoughts on endometriosis and hormones. Dr. Dulemba also joined us in episode 106 on robotic excision surgery and 109 on adhesions, so if you missed those, please check them out! Also I’d like to thank Kate from EndoGirlsBlog for brainstorming these...

Today we are so excited to speak with Julia Mandeville. Julia is the co-founder of the Barbados Association of Endometriosis & P.C.O.S. She is currently a doctoral student and as part of her role as a graduate researcher, she is the project coordinator of several research studies investigating barriers to diagnosis for Black people with endometriosis and PCOS. She has focused much of her research and public health intervention efforts on investigating endometriosis in underserved...

We talk about the grief that can accompany having a chronic illness. When endometriosis causes us ongoing losses in multiple aspects of our life, over and over again, it’s absolutely heartbreaking. We talk about some reasons why we might grieve due to chronic illness, what we personally grieve, and how our grief has impacted our lives. Clickable links at insixteenyears.com/episode111 --Grieving Chronic Illness and Injury — Infinite Losses CONNECT WITH US! INSTAGRAM:...

We speak with Arti Shah (she/her), a content creator and a dedicated endometriosis advocate actively engaged in the endometriosis space in Kenya and beyond. Her conviction and commitment is to positively impact the narrative of living with endometriosis through self-advocacy, play therapy and personal engagement. Arti advocates so that the next generation doesn’t have to battle this debilitating condition as we have and can have a better quality of life from an early age. Arti is the...

We interview Dr Dulemba, an excision surgeon who has been in private practice in Denton, Texas, since 1986. He’s performed over 7300 endometriosis surgeries, so he has a lot of insight on endometriosis. Dr. Delumba offers a second look surgery for adhesions just a few days after his original excision surgery. He brings his knowledge to this episode to answer various questions related to adhesions! Dr. Dulemba also joined us in episode 106 to speak about robotic excision surgery, so if...

We’ve had this podcast for over 4 years! Recently, I listened to our episodes 1-50 to update them where necessary, and I saw how much our advocacy has changed and how much we’ve grown over these years. Today we talk about some of our mistakes and what we wish we’d known when we began advocating. Clickable links at insixteenyears.com/episode108 --Ellis K, Munro D, Clarke J. Endometriosis Is Undervalued: A Call to Action. Front Glob Womens Health. 2022 May 10;3:902371. doi:...

We speak with Kate Boyce (she/her), who is the co-founder of the Instagram and webpage EndoGirlsBlog, which provides accurate information to people with endometriosis. Kate is a board certified patient advocate and endometriosis patient herself. Excision surgery is operator dependent, meaning that it depends on the surgeon’s skills. There are very few excision surgeons in the world with the top level skill, and many regular OBGYNs with no extra surgical training, and then surgeons at...

We interview Dr Dulemba, an excision surgeon who has been in private practice in Denton, Texas, since 1986. He’s performed over 5000 standard laparoscopic endometriosis cases and over 2300 robotic endometriosis cases! He's been performing robotic surgery since 2007, and now all his surgeries are done via robotics.  Dr. Dulemba has published papers addressing pelvic pain, laparoscopy, endometriosis, and robotic surgery. Today, he shares his insight on robotic surgery, including safety,...

Ableism is prevalent in society, and it’s systemic, just as racism and other forms of oppression and discrimination are. We discuss what ableism is, and give a brief recap of the medical vs the social model of disability before diving into some ableist comments we’ve heard as people with chronic illnesses and dynamic disabilities. We also touch briefly on the ableism of wellness culture and the lack of disability accommodations throughout society. Note: we are only speaking for...

Ableism is prevalent in society, and it’s systemic, just as racism and other forms of oppression and discrimination are. We discuss what ableism is, and give a brief recap of the medical vs the social model of disability before diving into some ableist comments we’ve heard as people with chronic illnesses and dynamic disabilities. Note: we are only speaking for ourselves and not for the disability community at large. If our limited discussion of ableism interests you, we encourage you...

We speak with Alexandra (Alex) Mitchell (she/her) from Australia about the standard of endometriosis care, discussing the Australian movement to Change the Guidelines as well as problems with multiple guidelines worldwide. Alex is an outspoken advocate in our endometriosis community. Across multiple social media platforms and organizations, she pushes for systemic changes to endometriosis care so that patients can access the gold standard treatment that they need. She also is the...

Dr. Jeff Arrington is an outspoken endometriosis advocate, expert endometriosis excision surgeon, and advanced Minimally Invasive Gynecologic Surgery specialist. The evolution of his practice to focus on advanced excision of endometriosis really was driven by patient need. In practice he was able to continue advancing knowledge and surgical skill through focusing on endometriosis care, eventually building a full multi-disciplinary practice.  Now, after his last 4 years as a surgeon at the...

With dealing with this disease and all the repercussions of it on our physical and mental health, many of us feel or have felt like we are broken. We explore the feelings of brokenness and talk about how although we might feel like we are broken - which are valid feelings and a normal response to living with chronic illness - we are not inherently broken as a human being. We are not unworthy, inadequate, unlovable, or undeserving in any way. CONNECT WITH US! INSTAGRAM: @in16yearsofendo...

Dr. Abhishek Mangeshikar (he/him) is an expert excision surgeon who also advocates and spreads awareness of correct information of endometriosis. He’s performed almost 2000 surgeries, and has been running his multidisciplinary endometriosis practice for over 7 years. He is the founder and director of the Indian Centre for Endometriosis (ICE), which is a knowledge bank about endometriosis: correcting myths with endometriosis facts, discussing treatment options/procedures, and providing ample...

Olivia Nwankudu (she/her) is an endometriosis advocate and Founder of EndoSurvivors International Foundation (ESIF); a non-profit organization focused on raising awareness about endometriosis, educating the public about endometriosis, and supporting endometriosis patients in Nigeria. ESIF is also committed to reducing period poverty and improving school retention through the free distribution of sanitary pads to school children. Since inception, ESIF has educated over 9000 adolescents...

We continue our series on disability by talking about identifying as disabled with endometriosis, internalized ableism, invisible or non-apparent disability, the social vs the medical model of disability, and language around disability. CONNECT WITH US! INSTAGRAM: @in16yearsofendo WEBSITE AND RESOURCES: insixteenyears.com LIKE OUR SHOW? Please rate it or leave a review! SUPPORT US by buying us a coffee: https://ko-fi.com/insixteenyears

Soha Wahb (she/her) is a Lebanese medical student at the American University of Beirut, and founder of “Endo In Arabic”, an initiative that aims to provide accurate information about Endometriosis in both English and Arabic, and to shed light on patients’ struggles and the factors hindering access to proper care. In this episode, Soha brings forth her perspectives of being both a patient and healthcare professional to talk about the difficulties of accessing expert care, such as how...