Hope on the horizon as Abbey Lee battles with private pain
In the March issue of Vogue Australia, the actor and supermodel Abbey Lee shares her 15-year battle with chronic pain from endometriosis.
In Abbey Lee’s latest movie, an American Civil War epic called Horizon, directed by, written and starring Kevin Costner, she learnt to ride a horse, more than holding her own against the legendary Oscar winner.
And she did it all while battling debilitating endometriosis. For 15 years, Lee reveals, she has lived with a “cocktail of chronic pain”, searching everywhere for treatment, help and support.
“I had cameras go in, cameras go up. I had diets, pills, specialists. Everything Eastern. Everything Western,” Lee told Vogue Australia. “I would just try and try and try to get better. I was hospitalised numerous times when things got really bad, when there were flare-ups. And all of this was happening in the dark. No one at work ever knows I’m in pain, even though I am. All the time.”
March is Australia’s annual endometriosis month, raising awareness for the approximately 14 per cent of Australian women who live with the disease, in which the lining of the uterus grows outside the womb. Lee has never spoken before about her experience of it, choosing to do so for the first time with Vogue Australia’s March issue.
Directly after wrapping Horizon, Lee travelled to the UK for surgery with specialist Dr Peter Barton-Smith to remove the endometriosis. “He was like, ‘It’ll probably take 20 minutes’ … It took him almost three hours. It was absolutely everywhere. It was awful. My body had grown walls of skin to try and help protect itself.”
Since the surgery, Lee’s chronic pain, concentrated in her pelvis, bladder and stomach, has halved. “I feel like a different woman. I can do things that I couldn’t … I also have more energy … pain like that really sucks your general energy so it’s nice to have a bit more spark.”
But, Lee points out, there is still no cure. “It is something that you have to live with. The surgery helps, but it hasn’t fixed me. I’m still dealing with it.”
And it didn’t stop her from throwing herself into Horizon, a passion project for Costner, who mortgaged his own property in Santa Barbara to help finance the $100m film, being released in cinemas in two parts in June and August. He came to Lee specifically and offered her the part over Zoom. “How the f--k does Kevin Costner know who I am?” Lee laughs, recalling their first meeting.
Read the full story in Vogue Australia’s March issue, on sale now
