This quirky bit of medical history opens Abby Norman’s vivid memoir, “Ask Me About My Uterus.” But the focus of the book is really in the subtitle: “A Quest to Make Doctors Believe in Women’s Pain.” She builds a convincing case that women describing discomfort are more likely than men to be dismissed by physicians, but along the way tells a story that will resonate with anyone (man or woman) who has ever experienced pain.

Image Credit... Alessandra Montalto/The New York Times

Norman suffers from endometriosis — a chronic and debilitating illness triggered by uterine-like cells growing outside of the womb. Women with the disorder have heavy, agonizing periods along with a litany of other symptoms depending on where the rogue cells lurk. If they congregate near the bladder, urinating hurts; near the sciatic nerve, pain can shoot down the legs; inside the lung (a rare event), breathing can be stifled.

After one bout — “as sudden as a thunderclap. A stabbing pain in my middle” — Norman eventually got to an emergency room, where she was handed the typical 1-10 pain scorecard. She was still aching, but not in the original horrors of it all. So she didn’t know how to assign a number to it: “Bad enough that I couldn’t ignore it, which made it definitely higher than a four or five.” She questioned whether she was a six or higher and whether the doctor would believe her anyhow.

Norman repeatedly told doctors that sexual intercourse ached “like a dull pinch, that resonated to my pelvis.” No one paid attention until her boyfriend accompanied her and mentioned his frustration. “Becoming a disappointment to a man,” she writes, “seemed to do the trick.”

Norman is a terrific storyteller with a gift for weaving memorable anecdotes, some drawn from medical history, others from recent scientific debates and most plucked from her own travails. We learn about Sigmund Freud and his views of his “hysterical” female clients. We read about baby monkeys who grew up with emotional issues because their real cuddly moms were removed at birth and replaced with pretend wire-doll monkey-mothers. We learn of recent ideas challenging long-held notions about the origins of endometriosis. Many experts no longer believe the disease is triggered by uterine cells that escaped the womb, but rather by uterine-like cells that originated outside of it.