A new campaign is exposing the unacceptable lack of care women receive when seeking treatment for the painful reality of endometriosis.
Launched by News.com.au, About Bloody Time, featues a video that relays the story of a girl who suffers from debilitating endometriosis symptoms and isn’t taken seriously by medical professionals or anyone around her.
It’s an unfortunately relatable story for the nearly 1 million Australian girls, women and those assigned female at birth who live with endometriosis– a common disease where tissue similar to the lining of the womb grows outside it in other parts of the body.
Common symptoms of the disease include pelvic pain that disrupts daily life during a person’s period. It can also impact fertility for some but not for all, and there is no cure.
“I just got my first period,” says 14-year-old Eva Luna Austin, in the beginning of the campaign video. “Mum says it’s a part of becoming a woman. Soon I realise it’s not so simple.”
“At school, I’ll get such bad cramps– I’ll often cry in front of my classmates,” she says. “But I’ll be dismissed by teachers and school nurses. “It’s just bad period pain’, they’ll say.”
“When I’m 18, I’ll go to the hospital, feeling like my stomach is being ripped out. They’ll just send me home with nurofen. ‘It’s just bad period pain’, they’ll say.”
“In my 20’s I’ll have surgery three times. I’ll just get by at Uni because every month, I’ll be curled over on the shower floor, as though my pelvis is being torn out.”
The video then cuts to a grown woman (played by senior reporter at News.com.au, Lexie Cartwright), representing the older version the girl, who says she was let go from her first job for taking too many sick days due to her pain.
‘It’s just bad period pain, it’s not an excuse for sick days’, the woman is told by her employer.
The woman goes on to say: “When I’m 30, I’ll try for a baby. Three years later, I’ll still be trying.”
“Endometriosis is not ‘just bad period pain’,” the woman says with finality.
The compelling video tells the audience that medicare is failing women and it’s ‘About Bloody Time’ things changed.
The dismissal of the disease as “just bad period pain” to a young girl all the way through to her 30’s as she tries for a baby reveals a message that advocates and those who suffer from endometriosis have been trying to get across for years.
And while awareness of the disease is certainly growing, Cartwright said that every person she interviewed before undertaking the campaign video, felt like they had been “gaslighted for years” and “wasted medical professionals’ time”.
“I hope that this campaign is successful in prompting a deeper understanding so sufferers no longer have to deal with this impostor-syndrome on top of the endometriosis itself,” Cartwright said.
It takes, on average, seven years for women to receive a pelvic pain diagnosis, but recent political and medical developments are offering hope for improvement.
Queensland’s government has just announced it’s investing an extra $18.2 million over five years for endometriosis and pelvic pain initiatives.
The Federal Government is also stepping up nationwide with a $58 million package to improve health outcomes for women, which includes support for endometriosis.
And last week, Australia’s drug regulator approved the first treatment for endometriosis in 13 years to relieve debilitating pain for sufferers of the condition.