Michelle Leivars is a mentor for female entrepreneurs

When did your endo journey begin?

“My endo journey really began after the birth of my eldest daughter in 2004. I’d always struggled with period pain, but postpartum I knew something wasn’t right. For four years I tried to get help from my GP – only to be told that I had IBS, a pulled muscle or that it was all in my head. I was in so much pain that I’d often have to crawl up the stairs rather than walk.

“Over the years, I passed out from the pain and was taken to hospital in an ambulance a few times but no further investigations were ever made. It was only in 2009, after telling my GP that I couldn’t take it anymore, that she referred me to gynaecology. The consultant listened to my history and booked me in for a laparoscopy and left ovary removal. Endometriosis was never mentioned, and I had a pretty traumatic post-surgery experience when it turned out that a screw had been left inside me and was trying to force its way out!

“At one point, I had endo on my bladder and bowel. Every time it spread, it was excised and I was told I’d get some relief – but it always returned a few months later.”

What treatments have you tried?

“I’ve tried Zoladex injections, artificial menopause, trials of medication. Following the birth of my second daughter in 2013, I had the coil fitted to deal with the pain and eventually had a sterilisation procedure. Two years later, I was passing huge clots again, which my GP sent off to the lab. The results remarkably said that I’d been pregnant and was having a miscarriage. It was such a shock; I found myself grieving for a child that I never knew I could have had.

“Aged 29, I decided to go ahead with a hysterectomy. A week after surgery, my GP phoned to tell me that my ‘pregnancy’ sample slides had been re-examined and that they’d now concluded it hadn’t been a miscarriage after all. I’d spent a year grieving beating myself up for potentially causing the loss by taking painkillers – only to find out that that hadn’t been the case all. I was utterly devastated.

“I have been plagued by Endometriosis my whole life, and now it looks like it has possibly returned on my bowel. It’s been a fight to this stage. It’s such a common condition but women are often made to feel like it’s psychological rather than physical. It took nearly eight years to get a diagnosis.”

6 women on how they got an endometriosis diagnosis – and their top tips for advocating for treatment