I was 12 when I got my first period — and from day one, it was horrendous. Nights spent curled up on the bathroom floor, drifting in and out of consciousness. Days missed from school, my body doubled over in waves of pain. The bleeding was heavy, relentless.

But I kept quiet. I never really asked for help. I never really told anyone how bad it was. I was embarrassed, not wanting to talk about menstruation. I also thought, to some extent, that what I was experiencing was normal. 

When I was about 13, I did ask for help. Hospitalised with suspected appendicitis after days of excruciating pain, I was eventually sent home with nothing but an unofficial diagnosis of hypochondria, and an appointment with a child psychologist.

This experience of not being listened to, of being told I was crazy, that I was doing it for attention, and that there was nothing physically wrong with me, had a profound impact on my mental health. It still does today. 

When I was 16, my mum took me to the doctors. She had grown concerned about how debilitating my periods were, and I was already anxious enough about my upcoming GCSEs. My GP put me on the pill and told me not to tell anyone about it in case they thought I was sexually active. Not long before this, I had undergone several rather uncomfortable tests as I was struggling with urinary frequency and bladder pain. In this instance, I was told the problem was that I was drinking too much water. This was false, and this was negligent. The consequence of this on my health was catastrophic.

Shortly before my 18th birthday, things took a turn for the worse. I was in my second year at performing arts college, but came down with what I thought was the flu and took a day off of training for the first time, before swiftly rushing back into classes and rehearsals. I struggled to recover from what I eventually learned had been glandular fever, battling intense fatigue.

The fatigue was joined by things which had been lying dormant, threatening to take over for years. These things included endometriosis, POTS, and Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. Almost overnight, I went from hours on my feet doing what I loved every day to barely being able to eat, sleep, or leave the house. I am extremely privileged that at that point in time, my family had access to private healthcare, and so I was able to bypass some of the time most people spend on lengthy NHS waitlists.

Six months of tests and ineffective treatments went by with very little progress. My days were consumed by research as I tried to piece together the impossible jigsaw puzzle that was my body. “Could we be looking at endometriosis?” I eventually asked my urogynaecologist.

“It’s a possibility,” he responded. I demanded a laparoscopy. I felt crazy. I was underweight, suicidal, and in constant pain.

Even opiates weren’t helping; they just gave me insomnia. Scans weren’t telling us anything useful, and I was desperate to find out what was going on. He agreed, and a month later, I was under general anaesthetic at a hospital in London.

It was a relief when they said they had found endometriosis on my right ovary, and that they had lasered the tissue off using a surgical technique called ablation. I also had a deeply embedded urinary tract infection which would need extensive treatment, but that is a whole other kettle of fish — one I will certainly delve into in a separate article. My recovery was dreadful; I was given no guidance on how to look after my wounds, and ultimately, I experienced no improvement. If anything, my symptoms deteriorated even further. A year later, we tried again, and all I got was déjà vu.

Yet another year with a low quality of life went by. I was in severe, debilitating pain. I barely saw my friends, I lost my sense of self, and I was at an all-time low. Through gritted teeth, I researched and connected with some wonderful people through a Facebook support group who helped me better understand what was going on. I finally learned that excision, rather than ablation, was the gold-standard treatment for endometriosis. 

To cut a very long story short, I eventually saw a BSGE-accredited specialist who performed excision surgery on the extensive endometriosis lesions, which were found in various locations across my pelvis, and then removed severe adhesions, which had been primarily caused by the disease, and likely exacerbated by my previous surgeries. They had gotten so bad that one of my ureters (the tubes that carry urine from the kidney to the urinary bladder) was being partially obstructed. 

I woke up from my excision surgery at a hospital in Surrey with less pain than I went into it with. Really, I did. My recovery was swift and smooth. I had my life back. How much of that is down to luck, how much is down to lifestyle, and how much is down to the quality of care I received, I don’t think I’ll ever know for sure. But, I truly am so grateful.

Amid all of this, a long and complicated care plan saw me and my urologist finally get my embedded UTI under control, physiotherapy and steroid injections saw my ongoing hip issues become more manageable, spinal nerve block injections helped to manage pain that was most likely coming from nerve pain caused by endometriosis, 

I never went back to performing arts. I don’t think I was ever truly built for it, and I had lost my passion. But I loved my time at college, and met one of my greatest friends through theatre. This friend undoubtedly got me through some of the hardest points in my health journey. 

I successfully completed my undergraduate degree in English and Classical Studies, and was even able to play lacrosse at Royal Holloway, with a view to go into journalism. Throughout my three years there, I rediscovered my love for football and started reporting on the women’s game. 

It was this that pushed me to apply for the MA Sports Journalism course at St Mary’s University, Twickenham. The year flew by, and I got to cover so many stories that meant a lot to me, once again learning and working alongside some truly phenomenal professionals. 

I elected to dedicate my final project to endometriosis, and in 2025 I produced a long-form piece of journalism about the disease through the lens of women’s football and the world surrounding it. 

During this time, some of my symptoms — predominantly pelvic pain and irregular bleeding — returned. A transvaginal ultrasound revealed that I also had adenomyosis. 

One of the things that has caught my attention whilst learning and writing about endometriosis and adenomyosis is, unsurprisingly, how little most of us know about them.

What is slightly surprising, though, is that this lack of understanding, and more notably this lack of willingness to learn, is not limited just to health problems like endometriosis. Women’s health as a whole remains vastly under-researched.

The very existence of diseases such as endometriosis is rarely acknowledged when girls are ‘taught’ about their reproductive systems. Something else that is all too often left out of the curriculum is that the menstrual cycle doesn’t only affect you during your period. When you are going through puberty as a teenager — in my experience — you don’t learn a whole lot more than the basics of how your body works. You learn about menstruation itself, maybe ovulation if you’re lucky.

This fact is particularly significant when it comes to sport and exercise, and that is not just for professional athletes. Women and girls may notice, for example, that they can comfortably lift 30 kilograms in the gym one week, and then another week the same weight feels twice as heavy. Instead of understanding that it is natural for their perceived strength to fluctuate based on what stage of the cycle they are in, many women and girls are left feeling confused, weak, or embarrassed. If we can’t even break down the nuances of the menstrual cycle, how can we begin to talk about the complexities of a condition like endometriosis?

My life looks very different now to what it did a few years back, but I don’t know if you’re ever truly out of the woods. I had complications with my IUD and had to have it removed. I’ve been through trauma therapy. I recently found out I also have adenomyosis, which was a difficult pill to swallow. I still live with chronic pain, I probably always will. I do rely on medication to function day to day — one prescription for POTS, one for depression, and one for an ‘undifferentiated connective tissue disorder’.

I sometimes have to take mefenamic acid (a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug), and I tend to take the progesterone-only pill back-to-back to avoid having periods. I want to normalise all of these things, because some of us just aren’t dealt the best hand when it comes to our bodies. I need a little help from science, and that’s okay. Some months are worse than others, but making sure my lifestyle supports my body in the right ways helps a lot, too.

Everyone always says talking helps. Putting pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and talking about endometriosis helps me. More than that, though, if this website does one thing, I hope it helps to remove some of the shame we often feel for experiencing a condition like endometriosis. I hope I can use not only my personal experience, but my training as a journalist and my passion for research, to help move conversations about women’s health forward.