Annalise, a 52-year-old web developer in Southern California, lived the better half of her adult life with a host of medical symptoms that no one could explain: constant low-level pain when using the bathroom, recurring stomachaches that would flare up about once a month, and, at one point, major agonizing swelling in her lower abdomen.
Annalise identifies as a transgender woman. But one day in 2016 when getting a CT scan to look for kidney stones that doctors thought could explain the stomach pain, she learned that she actually had a uterus, which doctors told her had probably been causing most of her symptoms.
