For years, Amoya Stewart tried to explain her pain to doctors who wouldn’t listen. Her periods were unbearable. Her body was changing in ways she couldn’t explain. Test after test came back inconclusive, and doctor after doctor sent her home with no real answers.
“I feel like nobody was really listening,” Stewart says.
Endometriosis often goes undiagnosed for years. It can be hard to detect on standard imaging, and symptoms are frequently mistaken for other conditions. For Stewart, that meant living with pain that disrupted her work, her finances and her sense of being taken seriously by the people meant to help her.
Dismissed, Again and Again
Growing up in Jamaica, Stewart remembers periods so heavy and painful that she missed school and ended up in the hospital. Doctors told her it was just pain, nothing more.
She moved to the United States in 2019. Not long after, she noticed a hard mass forming near her stomach and worried it might be cancer. When she brought her concerns to her gynecologist, he attributed the mass to her weight and dismissed the issue without further investigation.
Stewart switched doctors. The next one ran tests and suggested the mass might be scar tissue from an earlier C-section. The pain kept getting worse.
Stewart says she felt dismissed at every turn, and she believes race, immigration status and assumptions about her weight all played a role.
A Doctor Who Asked the Right Questions
Eventually, Stewart’s gastroenterologist got involved. A colonoscopy and endoscopy revealed signs that led him to believe the issue might be gynecological rather than digestive. Stewart brought that information back to her gynecologist, who still couldn’t explain what was happening but referred her to a list of surgeons specializing in endometriosis.
That referral led her to Julia Keltz, MD, board-certified OB/GYN and Interim Chair of Obstetrics and Gynecology at WMCHealth.
During their first appointment, Dr. Keltz took the time to ask Stewart detailed questions about her symptoms, something none of her previous doctors had done. That conversation opened the door to a diagnosis: endometriosis, confirmed by surgery. Doctors removed several centimeters of hardened tissue that had built up and spread to her rectum, bladder and fallopian tubes.
Stewart says doctors offered her a long list of possible explanations over the years. “It was a lot of things, but never endometriosis,” she says.
Living With a Chronic Condition
Since her diagnosis, Stewart has undergone multiple surgeries and tried several medications, including one that caused a serious complication and required a change in treatment. She still lives with pain daily and has chosen to keep her uterus, which means the condition hasn’t gone away.
What’s made the biggest difference isn’t a cure. It’s having a doctor who listens.
“She treats me as if I am a human being,” Stewart says of Dr. Keltz. When Stewart emailed about an unrelated finding on a spine MRI, Dr. Keltz asked her to come in right away rather than wait. “This is someone who is proactive instead of reactive,” Stewart says.
Beyond the physical pain, Stewart says endometriosis has cost her financially and emotionally, and strained her ability to keep up at work and at home. She hopes to see more research funding and more open conversation about how the disease affects women across every part of their lives.
Getting the Care You Deserve
If you’re living with pain that doctors keep dismissing, you don’t have to accept that as the answer.
“Do not give up,” Stewart says. “Don’t let anyone talk you out of trusting what you’re feeling, whether that’s family, friends or people in the medical field. Keep going, keep asking questions, keep searching.”
Stewart credits her daughter, her parents, her partner, her sisters and her coworkers at Kaplan Career Academy with carrying her through the days when she had no energy or fight left. She’s also grateful to Dr. Keltz, who she says treated her like a human being when she needed it most.
To learn more about women’s health services at WMCHealth, visit our website.