Northampton endometriosis sufferer calls for better education about the condition in schools
It's a painful condition where cells like those that line the womb grow in other parts of the body and can affect fertility.
A petition set up by a Northampton woman with endometriosis is calling for better education about the painful condition.
It's where cells like those that line the womb grow in other parts of the body, and it can affect fertility by making it harder to conceive.
46 year old Melanie Bull from Duston suffered with the condition for around 13 years before she got a diagnosis.
"People tell you it's just a bad period, or IBS."
Melanie says she started her periods early, at the age of nine, and from the age of 10 she was suffering so badly her doctor put her on birth control pills to try and manage her heavy bleeding and pain:
"I kept going backwards and forwards to the GP because I'd bleed through my school uniform. I'd have time off at school. And at that age, I didn't really understand periods at nine, no one in the school did either."
Despite wanting a large family, due to her condition she was only able to have one daughter, Chloe who is now 28.
Melanie says she feels lucky to have had her daughter young, who now has children of her own, but she suffered years of pain and miscarriages.
She wants more secondary school education so young woman can access help earlier:
" I just want to be able to, you know, get secondary schools to speak about it so that girls do know the difference between a period and endometriosis. And if they feel like they've got the symptoms, that they can go to their GP and hopefully get the help that they need and get diagnosed and get on the right path."
There's no cure for endometriosis, though their are treatments, many of which Melanie has attempted:
"I've had it lasered away, which is done through keyhole through a laparoscopy, which is the standard kind of thing that they do. I'm on loads of different pain relief that I have to take every day.
"I've tried hormone injections, Mirena coil. I've been to specialists in Milton Keynes, in Surrey, in London. I've tried numerous different things. It's unbelievable, but there is no cure for endometriosis."
She says she wants to be a voice for young people, so that they can get diagnosed, hopefully at a younger age, and be able to go on and have a family, and avoid the pain she has been though.
Melanie is now trying to lose weight so she is eligible for a hysterectomy to remove her womb.
You can find a link to her petition at the top of this article.