Posted by For my STEAM project topic, I decided to research endometriosis. My cousin has this disease and takes birth control to treat it and I wondered how that worked. There isn’t an answer to how the disease begins, but I found that endometriosis is dependent on estrogen and produces its own source of the hormone allowing it to grow on the outside of the uterus, fallopian tubes, ovaries, and in rare cases, other organs in the body. I also wanted to highlight that although endometriosis is made of tissue very similar to the endometrium layer in the uterus, the inside of the uterus is unaffected by the disease. That’s why in my painting, half of the uterus is open to show the inside and the three tissue layers. 
This piece does an excellent job of explaining and conveying exactly what endometriosis looks like when a person has it. Endometriosis does not impact the inner part of the uterus, so the piece provides a window inside the uterus that portrays how the inner uterus is unaffected. The picture has lesions or endometriosis tissue growing on the outer layer of the uterus (perimetrium), as well as the fallopian tubes and ovaries. This tissue growth has two possibilities of why they happen. One reason could be that during a women’s period there is too much tissue, and instead of shedding it all some of it spills out to the fallopian tubes and then leading to other tissues in the female reproductive system. Another reason could be that the endometrium tissue enters the blood stream and then travels throughout the body. This also could explain why endometriosis can take place, in rare cases, other places in the body, like even the brain. As of right now there is no cure for endometriosis, but there is treatment to prevent future growth and the pain that is caused by having the disease. For some people taking birth control works due to it balancing hormone levels and not allowing unwanted spikes in estrogen that could lead to extra growth of endometrium tissue.