Woman with endometriosis forced to pay £25,000 for private care after condition ‘missed’ for 8 years

A woman says she was forced to pay around £25,000 for private healthcare to treat endometriosis after her symptoms were “overlooked” for eight years.

Aneka Hindocha, 34, started voicing her concerns about painful periods when she was aged 25 but says she was initially told by doctors this was normal.

Ms Hindocha, who described the pain of endometriosis as “someone ripping your insides out”, says the condition should have been diagnosed sooner but argued women’s pain often gets overlooked and ignored.

Endometriosis is a very common chronic inflammatory condition, impacting an estimated 1.5 million women in the UK. An inquiry by the All-Party Political Group found that like Ms Hindocha, it takes an average of eight years to get a diagnosis.

The condition sees tissue comparable to womb-lining grow in other places in the body - with symptoms often debilitating and spanning from infertility to painful periods, tiredness, pain while having sex, as well as depression and anxiety.

“I was told painful periods were normal, which they are not, but I believed that at the time,” Ms Hindocha told The Independent. “I thought the issue was me. I thought I was being a hypochondriac.”

Her health massively deteriorated in the summer of 2020 and she became bedbound for three days.

“I needed someone to find out what was wrong with me,“ Ms Hindocha added. “I was crying I was in so much pain.”

She says that two years later she still had not received her laparoscopy despite the fact her pain was getting more severe and so she ended up paying for a private scan. She finally got diagnosed with stage 4 endometriosis a week later.

“By the time of having my surgery at the end of February 2022, it had been nearly two years on the NHS waiting list and I was still being told to wait.”

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Source: The Independent, 18 October 2022