Doctors ignore endometriosis, because babies

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Nowhere is this more evident than when it comes to gynaecological conditions, such as endometriosis. One in 10 women suffer from the disease, but it takes, on average, seven to eight years to be diagnosed. Emma Cox, the chief executive of the charity Endometriosis UK, says that unless women with the disease are trying to conceive, they are often overlooked by doctors. “The attitude is that women are there to have babies,” she says.

It took Kaye Sedgwick Jones, a freelance illustrator and designer from Kent, more than 12 years to be diagnosed. In pain and seeking help, she was told by one doctor: “‘It’ll be better when you’ve had a baby’ ... which, when you’re 13, is a weird thing to be told,” she says. When she was finally diagnosed, at age 25, her first reaction was “sheer anger. I was livid. For so many years I was told the pain was in my head.”