laura cone’s day is structured around managing her pain.
diagnosed in her 20s with endometriosis, a condition in which bits of tissue lining the uterus escape and attach to other organs in the abdomen, she has been unable to work since 2014 due to the debilitating pain.
“on a typical day, when it’s not a horrible day, the first thing i do when i wake up in the morning is medicate,” she said.
cone uses everything from stretching to medicating to consuming medical cannabis to mitigate her condition. she can’t eat without taking medication and is lucky to get a few hours of sleep a night.
she no longer has access to the one procedure that made a difference, she said.
cone, and many others living with endometriosis and other pelvic pain conditions, rely on pelvic floor botox injections to manage the pain. the treatment can cost thousands of dollars; cone said she usually needed it done every three months.
until this time last year, the physician providing her with the treatment was able to bill the provincial health plan, but now it’s been uninsured, she said.
cone said she and other patients were notified last fall by a physician in saskatoon that the province would soon no longer pay for the procedure. that came true.