Endometriosis program coming to SA to help school girls recognise signs of the painful condition

IT causes severe pain, organ damage and infertility, but this condition is still significantly under-diagnosed. Now a new program could help teenage girls get diagnosed years earlier.

AS a teenager, Joelie Moncrieff read a magazine article about a disease called endometriosis and it “stuck” with her.

Years later, the now-mother-of-three struggled through six years of fertility treatment to give birth because of the effects of the condition, which strikes one in 10 Australian women.

“I didn’t think I had it at the time but ... I memorised the details from the magazine. After having trouble conceiving (youngest son Spike, now seven-months-old) ... a doctor listened to my symptoms and diagnosed me with endometriosis,” Ms Moncrieff, 36, said.
The disease — in which cells that line the uterus grow elsewhere in the body — can cause severe pain, nausea and fatigue, organ damage and infertility.

It is significantly under-diagnosed, prompting experts to launch an awareness program in South Australian schools.

Based on a New Zealand model, it will help teenage girls recognise the signs earlier and cut the average eight-year wait for diagnosis.

Eight schools have joined the three-week pilot program, to be run in August, but organisers want 12 schools to take part.

Cassandra Orlowski, Joelie Moncrieff with son Spike and Kelly Tschirpig (in glasses) all have endometriosis. Picture: Tricia Watkinson.

Pelvic Pain Foundation of Australia director Susan Evans, who is based in Adelaide, said helping girls to “recognise when pain isn’t normal is the best way of avoiding the severe problems that endometriosis can cause”.

Endometriosis NZ CEO Deborah Bush said if girls were experiencing severe pain as they entered puberty it was important to consider that it could be endometriosis.

Delays in diagnosis often occur because symptoms are mistaken for digestive complaints or downplayed as “normal” period pain.

It took 35-year-old Cassandra Orlowski about 14 years to get a proper diagnosis.

“I finally had a name for the disease which had caused me all of this pain — I wasn’t going insane after all,” she said.

Kelly Tschirpig, 22, first experienced symptoms in 2011, aged 15, but was not referred to a specialist until 2016.

“I had started to believe that it might be in my head, until I was admitted to hospital two times in a month,” she said.

Julie O’Brien, 34, waited a decade for a diagnosis and said during pain “flare ups” she found it hard to walk or sit without pain.

“My greatest wish is for there to be more awareness, especially if I have passed this on to my daughter,” she said.

For support join the Endometriosis Network Group SA on Facebook.

Originally published as Endometriosis program coming to SA to help school girls recognise signs of the painful condition