“I recall going to see Chris Angel in Las Vegas and I was excited the following day I was at the airport and I said ‘2018 is going to be the very best year of my life,’ Boy, was I wrong,” Kimberly Cuthbert who has been diagnosed with endometriosis said.
Cuthbert is a student at Cerritos College majoring in administration of justice while also working at the oncology Institute in Downey and a part-time cashier at T.J. Maxx who was diagnosed with the disease in 2018 and continues to live with it to this day.
According to the World Health Organization, Endometriosis is a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. It can cause severe pain in the pelvis and make it harder to get pregnant.
Cuthbert started having symptoms of endometriosis in January 2018 and was unaware of the disease before having it.
“I went to the doctor and they told me that they felt tenderness on my right lower side. Me, obviously freaking out I decided to go on Google and I read all the symptoms and saw it could’ve have something to do with my ovaries or with my fallopian tubes,” she said.
Her primary care physician told her to take her issues to a gynecologist which didn’t help.
“Right there and then at the gynecologist’s office I was seen by a nurse practitioner that I didn’t like…I told her, the symptoms that I was having and she said that it was completely normal,” Cuthbert said.
However, the pain was not normal as Cuthbert went to a hospital and got two CT scans with one showing she had a ruptured ovarian cyst and was told to go back to the gynecologist.
“When I went to the gynecologist, he said that I wasn’t feeling pain, and that it was normal
“Even though I was telling him, I had so much pain and asked for surgery to find out what’s going on. And he said, ‘I’m not going to do a surgery. It’s normal everything that you’re feeling.’
“So I contact my insurance. I filed a grievance and I asked for a second opinion,” Cuthbert stated.
She met with two other gynecologists who also didn’t provide her care and told her she was faking her pain.
“I go to my car, I start crying and I’m like, why is this happening to me? I went back home and I asked God for like a little bit of a sign that I wasn’t going nuts.
“I felt like I was going crazy and I felt like, oh my God, what if these gynecologists are right? What if the pain is actually in my head? What if I don’t feel anything until I start limping? So I’m like, I know that it’s not in my head,” Cuthbert shared.
It was then that found out about endometriosis on social media.
“I started looking at these Facebook posts and I started I saw this post that said ‘what people see, what people don’t see,’ And all of them said the same thing endometriosis, endometriosis,” she said.
Cuthbert seeing these posts made her change her primary care physician who then confirmed that she had endometriosis based on her symptoms.
“The only way for me to get fully diagnosed is to have laparoscopic surgery. The surgery was set for October 5th and come October 4, I was not doing well,” Cuthbert shared.
“I went to lunch with my mom, but I wasn’t focused because it was like the day before my surgery and she told me, ‘You have two options. You can either go through with the surgery and finally confirm what it is that you’ve been suspecting all this time or you can just back out of the surgery and keep suffering for the rest of your life.'”
The day of the surgery came and Cuthbert was listening to Niall Horan’s song “This Town” getting emotional on the way to the surgery.
She shared how she felt when she got to the hospital, “I was like, ‘Oh God, this is it. This is finally like the moment of truth.’
“They took me in and I was already under the anesthesia because I was starting a feel dizzy and the anesthesiologist was talking to me and we started talking about Chris Angel and then I just knocked out.
“When I woke up the doctor confirmed that I had stage two Endometriosis. So basically my suspicions of 10 months, were right and I was ignored by all of these gynecologists who were telling me, ‘Oh, the pain is in your head, you don’t have anything. It’s normal for you to be feeling this pain.’
“And everything was great, you know, like, for the like after those couple of years, life was great. until it wasn’t,” Cuthbert expressed.
“I started getting the pain again in 2022 and then I get an endobelly which is when a woman looks as if she’s pregnant when she’s not pregnant. Her belly is inflated because of the endo.
“I ended up going to a variety of gynecologists again who once again ignored me even though I showed them the pathology report,” Cuthbert stated.
This brings her to 2025 where she still hasn’t been able to get any care for her disease, “I feel like it’s getting worse and I can’t do anything about it because I know that it’s always going to be the same thing,” she said.
Even though Cuthbert struggles to get care she is still trying and continues to spread awareness on Endometriosis.
“To all those women with Endo, you’re not alone. Join on social media groups there is a lot of research out there and keep fighting, don’t give up and keep advocating for yourself and file grievances,” Cuthbert finished.
