Ovarian Cysts Pain

[kmgordo]

I am 22 years old and started having lower abdominal sharp pain in August of 2006. The pain would be on either side of my abdomen but not both at once. It's not excruciating but very uncomfortable and sometimes I have to catch my breath. I went to a gyno and he did a pelvic exam and thought it could be cysts, so he put me on birth control. I continued to have the pain so I went to my general practitioner and he thought it was kidney stones so he ordered a CT scan which showed nothing. I gave up for a while but then during intercourse I had shooting pain up my stomach so badly that I cried for 10 minutes. I went back to my gyno and had a vaginal ultrasound. He found a 7cm cyst on my right ovary with "something in it" but he wasn't sure what. Since it was painful and farily large, I had surgery on Feb 2 to remove and biopsy the cyst. He did a "mini-laparotomy" just to decrease the risk of it bursting during surgery and spreading anything nasty in my abdomen. Everything went well. He didn't have to remove the ovary. What was in the cyst was the cyst bleeding into itself. It's been more than 3 months since the surgery and I started having the same exact pains 2 weeks ago. I'm also tired sometimes and my white cell count is a little bit low. I had another US this past week and it's another small cyst (2cm) on my right ovary again. This one is bleeding as well. Since I am not in excruciating pain, the doctor is going to put me on another birth control for 4-6 weeks and do another ultrasound then to see if it's shrunk.

Should I be worried about cancer? I am thinking about getting a second opinion just to see what that Dr. thinks. I am also having extremely painful defecation. My lower abodomen constantly feels full. I also have a lot of pain on my left side but he said that ovary is fine. Why is my left ovary hurting if it's fine?

I am so tired of this pain. Although it's not terrible, it does hurt and is very uncomfortable. Any insight would be greatly helpful.

Thank you.

[mrs canada]

It sounds like you are suffering from endometriosis based on your symptoms (painful defecation, chronic pain, etc). Women with endometriosis can develop "chocolate cysts" on their ovaries called endometriomas which are filled with blood and can cause you to bleed internally (our friend Jacksynn has some good recent experience with this which she may want to share). As I understand it, birth control is good for controlling endometriosis because estrogen makes it grown and since bc prevents you from ovulating, your estrogen doesn't run wild and free.

It sounds like you're on the right track with your doctor.

[kmgordo]

Thank you so much for responding. I had thought about endo, but wouldn't my doctor have noticed that when I had my surgery?