Living with an invisible illness - Cumbrian mum welcomes calls for more support for women with endometriosis
Video report by Lauren Ostridge
A woman from Cumbria has welcomed calls from MPs for more government support for a debilitating illness that an estimated one in ten women suffer from in the UK.
Sophie MacGillivray, from Castle Carrock, lives with endometriosis - a painful condition that can cause infertility.
A new report, released this week, has highlighted the "devastating impact" of the condition, and found no improvement has been made in its diagnosis in the past decade.
Endometriosis is a medical condition where tissue - like that of the lining in the womb - starts to grow elsewhere in the body.
Charity Endometriosis UK it takes eight years to diagnose which women "endure unrelenting pain" every day as a result of the condition.
Sophie told ITV Border: "I honestly can't count how many appointments I had with doctors, surgeons, and the fact that they just told me it was just 'bad periods'. it was probably six or seven years of appointments and scans that they then told me we're gonna have to go in and have a look."
After years of severe pain, Sophie made the difficult decision to have a hysterectomy - something she described as 'life-changing.'
"The hysterectomy was my last resort, I had all the pain relief. I'd had injections in my stomach. I'd had everything that they could recommend for me to have. I've got my two gorgeous children now. I just wanted rid of it. I just wanted rid of the pain, the periods, all them horrendous feelings that I did have. I just wanted rid of that."
"It's a chronic illness and it affects you in so many different ways. Something more needs to be done."
Surveying more than 10,000 women, the all-party parliamentary group (AAPG) found it still takes an average of eight years for an individual to get a diagnosis of the condition - despite more than 50% of those with endometriosis having attended A&E ahead of diagnosis.
Chair of the APPG on endometriosis, Sir David Amess MP, said the report showed "the huge, life-long impact" of endometriosis.
"It is not acceptable that endometriosis and its potentially debilitating and damaging symptoms are often ignored or not taken seriously – or downplayed as linked to the menstrual cycle and periods," he said.
Recommendations made to the government include:
A commitment to reducing average diagnosis times
Establishing a baseline for the diagnosis, treatment and management of endometriosis based on NICE guidelines
Investing more funds into researching the condition
Emma Cox, CEO of Endometriosis UK, said the report "should be the final warning" to the government and NHS bodies. She spoke to presenter Ian Payne: