Hello. A bit of my gynae background first: I have two children, one conceived easily and born by c-section, the other conceived with difficulty through IVF and born vaginally with no problems. I had a laparoscopy about 5 years ago as part of my infertility investigations and everything appeared totally normal and healthy.

For the past few months, I have had pelvic pain that seems to start around mid-cycle as a stabbing pain in the left ovarian region, then becomes worse and spreads throughout my pelvis as my period approaches. Just before my period, the pain is pretty much constant all day and even shoots down my hips and around the tops of my thighs. My periods have usually been pretty heavy bleeds for about 5 days, with pretty bad cramps, but for the past few months, my periods have been excrutiatingly painful, with a heavy bleed for 2 days and then a kind of spotty brown bleed for 2 or 3 days after that. The pelvic pain subsides after my period and is totally gone about 3-4 days after the bleeding stops. Then it starts again mid-cycle, and so on and so forth.

Could I have endometriosis? The laparoscopy 5 years ago was clear but I wonder if this could have all developed since then. I should add that I had an ultrasound last month which found 3 small cysts in (or on?) the lower segment of my uterus but the doc claimed that this was normal and not necessarily indicative of endo. I have been given Ponstan to ease my period pains and told to come back in 3 months but I'm not really happy with that approach. What do you think?