Tash Stokes, pictured with her daughter Ruby, 7, and son George, 5, endured a lengthy battle to get a hysterectomy. Photo / Erica Jane
Tash Stokes, pictured with her daughter Ruby, 7, and son George, 5, endured a lengthy battle to get a hysterectomy. Photo / Erica Jane
Over summer, we’re revisiting some of the biggest and best podcast series from the NZ Herald network throughout 2023.
As the pain seared across her abdomen, Tash Stokes managed to send a message to her neighbour letting them know not to be worried by the sounds of her screams.
It was a message she’d sent before, around the same time each month, as the pain of her period left her curled in a ball and bedridden, unable to be the mum she wanted to be for her two children, now 5 and 7.
“It’s really life-limiting. I wanted to keep up with my kids, but I couldn’t,” says Hamilton-based Stokes, who was suffering from endometriosis, a chronic disease where uterine-like tissue grows outside of the uterus and can involve other organs and cause debilitating pain.
Tash Stokes with her children, George and Ruby. Photo / Black Robin Photography
Stokes recalls her periods being painful from the age of 13. By the time she was 27, and after years of hospitalisations where she was always sent home with painkillers but no real answers, she knew something had to change.
On this week’s episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me, Stokes reveals her ordeal to be granted a “life-changing” hysterectomy to combat the pain of her endometriosis, which was “severe”, surrounding her bowel and bladder as well as her uterus.
But while her GP supported her request for something more to be done about her condition, referring her to a gynaecologist, when she said she wanted a hysterectomy, “it was very frowned upon.”
“Obviously a hysterectomy is the removal of your womb,” says Stokes, a professional photographer who runs her own business alongside her husband.
“So it’s a very permanent decision. But that was part of the reason why I wanted it. I really wanted a permanent solution. I didn’t want to keep living my life like I was.”
But Stokes was told that, at 27, she was too young to be making such a decision.
Tash Stokes with her husband Arie and their children, George and Ruby. Photo / Erica Jane
“My gynaecologist flat out refused to operate before 30.”
“It was crazy to me, because at the time I already had two children. I’m a wife, a business owner. I felt like I was more than capable of making a very permanent decision for myself. Even though this was very much a situation that my husband and I had come to very happily, it definitely wasn’t supported,” says Stokes, who was devastated by how much she would continue to miss out on with her young children while she waited to be considered of age.
Instead, she had to “try every contraceptive available on the market before I could qualify for a hysterectomy”.
“I had to try birth control pills. I had to try IUDs. I had to try another medication that put me into menopause. I had to try different forms of painkillers. I needed to see if we could symptom manage with a combination of contraceptives and painkillers.”
But Stokes experienced “horrific side effects... and I knew in the back of my mind if there was a secret answer, if there was that magic pill, I’m sure someone would have given it to me already.”
She also went through two back-to-back excision surgeries to try and remove the endometriosis but says if she kept having the surgeries so frequently, it “would have continued to make my pain worse. Every surgery opens more nerve endings, so although we were removing the endometriosis, we were potentially increasing the pain by opening more nerve endings”.
Then, through a friend, she discovered a different gynaecologist, and everything changed.
To find out how Tash Stokes finally got the life-changing surgery she’d been seeking for years, listen to the full episode of One Day You’ll Thank Me.
