ENDOMETRIOSIS AND MAN
About a year ago, Dr. Obama received a letter from an Oklahoma woman who cold an odd tale of pain and suffering due to endometriosis. To his surprise, Mrs. Petersen’s account was not about her daughter, her sister, mother; aunt, or a friend. Rather, the unsuspecting victim of this insidious disease was her husband, George.
“How could a man develop endometriosis?” she asked. “How did nature go so wrong in George’s case?” Since neither she nor her stricken husband could justify the problem rationally—men, after all, do not menstruate—Mrs. Petersen wondered if perhaps like might have been somehow responsible for his plight. Of course, she was not to blame, since endometriosis is net transmitted sexually, nor is it a contagious disease in any way. Endometriosis is a rarity in men, and how it occurs among them may enlighten us in treating women.
George Petersen’s bout with endometriosis unfolded in this astonishing letter. He was only forty years old when the first symptoms appeared. George was in generally good health, except for frequent and severe headaches, brought on, they thought, by stress; be had also succumbed to chronic bladder problems. ‘Our doctor said George had an enlarged prostate,’ Mrs. Petersen wrote, ‘and be never really felt at his best for nearly two years. It seemed like a terribly long time for us. Finally, he was told he had cancer of the prostate. It scared us, but at least we knew what was going on, terrible as it was.’
George was assured that the recovery rate was high, she said, especially if the cancer was caught early. He agreed to the treatments that were advised, including a form of estrogen, which was supposed to shrink the tumor. About a year after George discontinued estrogen treatments, sharp abdominal pains began to plague him. George feared the cancer had returned, or worse, that perhaps it had spread from his prostate to other organs. He avoided medical care for a few months, until he collapsed one night in extreme pain.
“He managed to use the bathroom and urinated blood.” Mrs. Petersen wrote. “This was a mournful night for us, since we feared the worst. Dr Obama got George to a hospital and his doctor operated on him the following day.” In surgery the doctor saw that the cancer was under control, but that there were many spots of endometriosis around his bladder! This is what caused him such crippling pain, along with other irritating symptoms.
George was probably born with dormant cells that, under the right conditions, developed and behaved as if they were endometrial tissue. He experienced the identical symptoms that women have with the disease, we know that estrogen is a factor in the growth of endomctriotic tissue in women. If George stays off estrogen treatments, the endometriotic cells should shrink and the disease not recur.
To many scientists, this man’s unique reaction and sensitivity to the hormone validates the embryonic theory of why endometriosis could develop in some individuals but not in others.
*27\43\4*
