WHY I CAN'T HAVE A PROPER RELATIONSHIP WITH A MAN - NIKE OSINOWO'S REVEALING INTERVIEW ABOUT HER ENDOMETRIOSIS CONDITION

In a recent interview with Vanguard, former beauty queen and socialite, Nike Osinowo talked about her battle with endometriosis – a disorder that occurs when the endometrium (cells lining the uterus) grow in other areas of the body, causing excruciating pain and infertility- how it affects her sex life and other personal struggles. Read excerpts from the interview below, it's long but you'll find it quite revealing and I also managed to bring you the interesting parts but for the full in interview, go HERE;

I have lived with endometriosis since the age of 13. I was sent to boarding school in England when I was seven. It was during the first few days in secondary school that I began my periods (menstrual). They called the ambulance and I was hospitalized for 10 days because the pain started and wouldn’t stop. Every female student they had dealt with had had a normal period and coped with it, so they could not understand why I was dramatizing. They thought I just wanted attention. The pain was so intense I passed out. I was hospitalized and the challenge was now to get me to stop bleeding.

When you see your doctor, your doctor just tries to treat the symptoms and assumes the pain revolves around your menstrual cycle. But this is not so. This pain affects every single aspect of your life.

I, as Nike Oshinowo, have never had an examination without my period, I have never traveled without my period. There are so many things I have never done without my period. When I am very happy my period comes. When I’m depressed, my period is there. I learned to just cope with it.

I love the quote that women wear their pain like stilettos.

When I turned 40, I granted an interview and Nigerians understood why I never drank alcohol. You cannot be on medication and take alcohol. It was finally understood why I was so clean cut and into healthy living.

At last it was understood why if I come to your party, at 8pm I had to go home to bed and to take my pain killers; because when you live with endometriosis, you live with pain. I have a library in my home. It is a library about pain. I have so many books on pain cure. I have had so many surgeries I have lost count. I remember when Michael Jackson died and they talked about a drug he had been taking and I exclaimed –’ oh yes, I have taken that drug!’ You try everything to make the pain go away, so all I know is that I would not want a child of mine to suffer endometriosis. No. The only way to make sure that does not happen is to educate as many as I can.

Have a baby

One ignorant doctor told me to try to have a baby because once you have a baby, the pain would all go away. I thought to myself that if I had a gun I would have shot that doctor, and I would have been locked away and there would be no one to give me pain killers. The reason for that relief generally is that when you are pregnant, you don’t have periods and a long gap of not menstruating actually abates the symptoms of endometriosis.

Challenge

But the challenge is the pregnancy.How do I get pregnant to get to that stage?

Menopause

I’m 47, and I’m looking forward to menopause. Menopause is slowly creeping up on me. People like us look forward to it because it gives us a breather. I have finally learned how to cope with the pain, how to live with endometriosis, and to manage the disease. It takes up a huge amount of my time and life. 

No to sex

Women with endometriosis do not want to have sex because it’s painful. It is very, very painful. So you do not want to have intercourse once and it is painful, you’ll not want to go there. It’s not something you are going to look forward to. I have read books on this. And even when you try to forget the fact that you do not want to, half the time you are bleeding. You are either bleeding, or you do not want.

When every part of you is sore, on those days, you are not going to want, and even on the remaining five or so days that you are ‘OK, you are not going to want to have intercourse because it is going to be painful. You just don’t want to. So you cannot have a proper relationship with a man.