It’s a Friday afternoon and I’m wearing a blue hospital gown. I’m about to receive an internal ultrasound, one of many I’ve had in my adult life. But the weight of this one feels different.
Just 48 hours earlier I was at the Royal Women’s Hospital in Melbourne. The night before said hospital trip, I’d woken up to searing pain in my abdomen. It was my period, of course. While being awoken by cramps isn’t new for me, this pain ws extreme.
Like clockwork, I got up, made myself a hot water bottle, downed two pain killers and crawled back to bed, crying in pain, waiting for it to subside. But this time it didn’t. Instead, the pain became more and more intense.
My ovaries felt like they were on fire. The pain was what I imagine being sliced hip to hip is like. I was in so much pain that nausea arrived, and like many women who have been medically gaslit and told these symptoms are “common”, I said to myself that I’d only go to hospital if I actually vomited.
