I have endometriosis, I spent four years fighting to be diagnosed and fighting for treatment. At the beginning when I was losing so much blood I almost required transfusions, when I was crippled and doubled over with pain. My Male GP told me that “everyone has painful periods and to go and take some paracetamol”.

If I’d have listened and stopped fighting, I’d still be unable to walk. I’d have no diagnosis. I could have assumed that everyone suffered this way.

Women should not be bleeding for months at a time. Pain should not be that bad that you can’t walk. You should not be suffering so badly with fatigue that you need to rest after getting out of bed and having a shower. You should not have to put a towel on your office chair to avoid staining it, you should not have to announce to the office that they will see you covered in blood at some point because you can’t help it and you have to change clothes multiple times a day anyway.

If those things are happening to you (and this condition is as common in women as diabetes) then your doctors should help you and take your pain seriously. They need training to do this.