Nobody knew the pain Kylie suffered
ALL her life, Kylie Ingles was told to “suck it up” by doctors who did not understand she was suffering from a condition affecting one in 10 Australian women.
Kylie was 11 years old when she first started to experience severe pelvic pain.
She continued to experience debilitating pain in her teenage years.
Kylie, 36, was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2013.
Endometriosis is a condition where the endometrium, tissue that is inside of a woman’s uterus, grows outside of it and cannot be shed through menstruation.
Kylie has had four surgeries to remove the lesions that have grown on her organs, she is still recovering from her last operation last week.
“I deferred university for six months as a young woman and I had employers tell me to take a Panadol … there were lots of times where different GPs would tell me I had bowel issues or kidney issues. I was told I was lactose intolerant,” she said.
“Some of the doctors weren’t able to put a finger on it, they had no idea. I had some very unsympathetic doctors who would just give me paracetamol and send me on my way.”
Kylie said the condition was isolating.
“It was quite a dark and lonely time, I started to doubt myself thinking there was nothing, that I was just im- agining this excruciating pain,” she said.
“There have been many missed years of opportunity because I spent a lot of my recent years bedridden … so far this year I’ve been rushed to hospital three times because I’ve lost consciousness. Sometimes I don’t have time for the people I love, my friends or family, it can be incredible lonely.”
Kylie’s partner Craig Downs has been a great support.
“I’ve thrown up on him, he’s scraped me off the floor, I don’t know what I would have done without him,” she said.
“Without him and my family and friends, I don’t know what I would have done over the past few years.”
As a schoolteacher, Kylie gives her students everything she has, before coming home to collapse on the bed.
She wants young girls and women to know that their pain wasn’t “normal” and for the condition to become common knowledge among society.