I started my periods aged 15 and from day one they were painful, heavy and exhausting. I would faint, throw up, have to sleep on a towel, and they happened every three weeks for ten days. I didn’t talk to friends about them – the whole narrative around periods when I was younger was that they were dirty and unhygienic. Doctors told me that they would be more manageable and improve when I got older, or when I had a baby. I was made to feel it was just a normal part of being a girl – and the message that came through was that I simply needed to tough it out.
At the age of 47 – after various treatments including going on the pill, taking progesterone injections and undergoing sterilisation – I bled for 35 days consecutively, and an ultrasound finally revealed my condition: adenomyosis, meaning the lining of the womb (endometrium) grows outside the uterus into my pelvis. It only took 32 years to get a diagnosis.
My body functions like every other woman’s, but this story isn’t about me, it’s about women’s health issues being ignored. One in eight women are reported to suffer from adenomyosis, for which there’s no cure, not enough research and the waiting lists are long. This oversight in female health is nothing new. I was fortunate to have medical insurance, which meant I could pay for an ultrasound and have one quickly.
Besides the blatant unfairness of all this, the social impact is disastrous. Women are the main carers in society, and if they’re dealing with anything from heavy bleeding to anaemia, how can they fulfil their potential? And when they can’t, the economy isn’t getting their creativity, brilliance, determination or fervour. We’ve already lost so much as a society because women have not been kept well. I’m not a campaigner, but I recognise that there is a fight for funding when it comes to women’s reproductive health. We have parliamentary committees and investigating bodies, but until it’s as important in the world of pharmaceuticals and medicine for women to be healthy as it for a man to get an erection, we’re not there, and we all lose.
I was worried when I first spoke out about these issues on Radio 5 Live, that people would say, “Oh, she’s whining.” But I received so many messages from women – and men – grateful not to have these conditions left in the shadows. It inspired the monthly section on my radio show That Time of the Month. We tackle all sorts of health issues not spoken about: libido, incontinence, fertility and endometriosis, which affects around one in ten women in the UK. My hope is that, if we’re talking about it on national radio where parents, partners and children can hear it, it can’t be taboo. Both on radio and for my book, the reason people have spoken to me is, they don’t want someone else going through what they have. It’s a platform to say, “I’ve been told to keep my mouth shut and put up with it. But I don’t have to.”
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