Health REAL LIFE
Julie Burns, 52, from Ayrshire, waited 28 years for a diagnosis...
Feeling shooting pains zip through my body, it felt like I was being stabbed.
Often the pain was so debilitating I felt sick, and it left me so exhausted I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow.
At 14, I knew something was wrong with my periods.
With pain spreading from just under my chest to the tops of my legs, it was extreme. And I didn’t know anyone else who experienced anything similar to me when they had their periods.
My parents Wilma, now 71 and Denis, now 74, were incredibly supportive and worried about me.
Mum would do me a hot water bottle and took me back and forth to the doctors, where I was prescribed the pill aged 14.
And the pill did work for me –my symptoms became far more manageable.
‘When you have a child, it will sort itself out,’ I was told by doctors when I was 19.
Seriously, I thought. I’m 19 and not in a relationship.
Children had never been on my agenda anyway.
Throughout my twenties I’d still get bad pains once or twice a year where it was debilitating, but generally it was manageable.
I was still able to socialise, drink alcohol and go on holidays abroad like anyone else my age.
But at 30, it dawned on me how long I’d been on the pill.
And with a history of blood clots in the family, I asked my doctor if I should come off it.
‘You should probably take a break,’ they agreed.
My first cycle off the pill was as bad as it had been when I was a teenager.
Spending two days in bed with severe pain, I was so washed out I couldn’t lift my head off the pillow.
I’d felt like I had my life together. I’d met my nowhusband John, 63, and we were planning our lives.
Now I felt like I was back at square one.
Using over-the-counter
I spent days in bed
medication to get through the day, John was fabulous – giving me chocolates, cuddles and a hot bath whenever I needed it.
But at 35 I decided to go back to the doctors – it wasn’t how I wanted to live.
Referred to a gynaecologist, I had a vaginal ultrasound which came back clear.
‘We could try endometrial ablation,’ the gynaecologist said – where the lining of the womb is burnt off to stop bleeding.
In 2004 I had the surgery at Dumfries and Galloway Royal Infirmary and the physical bleeding of my periods stopped – I was fine for a couple of years but then I started getting f lare-ups of period pain.
Experiencing shooting, stabbing pains, I also had issues with my bowels including bad constipation.
BIG health story
The constipation was so bad I had an anal fissure and needed surgery to repair it.
