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Submitted by Bekxy Kuriakose on 14 September 2020

Padma Lakshmi, the model and television host opens up about Endometriosis, a painful and debilitating condition, in her memoir - Love, Loss and What We Ate  

The world knows Padma Lakshmi as the beautiful exotic Indian born model who became famous first as Salman Rushdie’s wife and then later as host of the famous food series Top Chef.

When I finished reading her memoir, I was struck by how superficial my knowledge and impression had been about her….she has led a dazzling and famous life but it was also in equal measure a hard life be it growing up as an Indian immigrant in US and facing bullying and hazing at school, living without her biological father, a life scarring car accident at the age of 14 and in her teens and adulthood living with the pain of endometriosis (diagnosed very late)- the treatment of which involved several surgeries.

Extracts:

"In the car inching its way down Fifth Avenue, toward Bergdorf Goodman and this glamorous party, I looked back on my past with a new understanding. This sickness, the "endo-whatever," had stained so much - my sense of self, my womanhood, my marriage, my ability to be present. I had effectively missed one week of each month every year of my life since I was thirteen, because of the chronic pain and hormonal fluctuations I suffered during my period. I had lain in bed, with heating pads and hot-water bottles, using acupuncture, drinking teas, taking various pain medications and suffering the collateral effects of them. I thought of all the many tests I missed in various classes throughout my education, the school dances, the jobs I knew I couldn't take as a model, because of the bleeding and bloating as well as the pain (especially the bathing suit and lingerie shoots, which paid the most). How many family occasions was I absent from? How many second or third dates did i not go on? How many times had I not been there for others or for myself? How many of my reactions to stress or emotional strife had been colored through the lens of chronic pain? My sense of self was defined by this handicap."

I thought about how, during my first surgery with Dr Seckin in 2006 he had made the grim discovery that I was missing part of an ovary. It had been removed by a previous doctor who, I suppose, had decided to keep the news of the collateral damage to himself. When I had come to after my fourth (or was it my fifth?) surgery just that past May of 2008, Dr Seckin told me gently that he'd had to remove my right fallopian tube. He had prepared me for this possibility. Still, it stung. I was thirty-seven, with half of my equipment gone. Had I found Seckin earlier, I could have saved my left ovary, I could have kept my right fallopian tube, and I may have even been able to salvage my marriage.
My gratitude for finding Seckin remained, but I began to be angry that I hadn't had treatment earlier. I was outraged that in spite of all the best health insurance and access to medical care on both U.S. coasts as well as in London, I had been undiagnosed and misdiagnosed until well into my mid-thrities. And now, with half my left ovary missing and a right fallopian tube gone, I started to confront the fact that all this could have been avoided."

 

The book opens not in chronological fashion but with how she met Salman, their affair, marriage and divorce….you the reader is immediately hooked on…the book then goes into her childhood, days spent growing in her grandparents house in Chennai and the flavours  and spices she came to love and imbibe. Her modelling days in Europe and trysts with food experiments and her coming back to America and building her career again and ultimately hosting Top Chef all make for very interesting reading. She details her favourite recipes in the book too. Along the way the men who came into her life and exited and her constant effort to maintain her dual identity of belonging both to the East and West too are fascinating. No doubt the most important event during the later part of her life was the birth of her daughter Krishna when doctors had told her she may never conceive.

Before I read this book I had no idea really what was endometriosis having had trouble free regular periods myself most of my life. But reading Padma’s memoir made me understand how painful and debilitating endometriosis can be. The book is an eye opener and hopefully reading this can inspire women who are silently suffering, to seek treatment.

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