Jordy Lucas landed her dream gig on Neighbours when she was only a teenager, but behind the scenes, she was struggling with undiagnosed pain.
Ms Lucas, 32, snagged the role of Summer Hoyland in 2010, which immediately changed her life, but some of the gloss was stripped away because of a common disease.
Ms Lucas told news.com.au that it was during this time that her periods started to become painful, and she had no idea what was going on.
There’s a common misconception that periods for women are just meant to be painful. Therefore, her symptoms were just dismissed as a normal part of being a woman – but the pain was beginning to take over her life.
She remembers finishing a scene on the long-running soap and needing to go to hospital because she’d been bleeding for weeks.
“I felt like I was going to pass out,” she said.
She wrapped for the day and headed to the hospital, but her pain and blood were dismissed, and she ended up being placed on the contraceptive pill.
To a certain extent, the pill was an answer to her problems; her symptoms subsided, and she stayed on it for years, even during her tenure in America.
When she returned home to Australia in 2020, she decided to stop using the contraceptive pill because she was getting migraines.
It was then she learned that the pill was just masking symptoms that hadn’t gone away, and suddenly, she was living with chronic pain once again.
She had heavy periods and near-constant discomfort, but when she had ultrasounds, nothing abnormal was showing up.
The actor was experiencing classic symptoms of endometriosis, but still found it very hard to get diagnosed.
This isn’t uncommon. On average it takes 7 years to be diagnosed with endometriosis in Australia.
During this time she did her best to live a normal life, but the pain was so severe she was hit with the realisation that she was lucky to be an actor because she’d no longer be able to hold down a 9-5 job.
She was stuck in a vicious cycle of bleeding so much she’d become anaemic, but not having any answers.
When she finally had keyhole surgery, she was worried that they’d find nothing and she’d be written off as melodramatic.
When the medical team confirmed that she did have endometrioses, she burst into tears from the sense of relief.
“I felt like I was being validated and being taken seriously, and I was in so much pain,” she said.
Ms Lucas said that before she was diagnosed, she felt “dismissed” and was just stuck living in pain.
Endometriosis affects 1 in 9 women but despite how common the disease is women still struggle to be heard.
“I had to fight for years to be taken seriously; by the time I was taken seriously, I was stage four, and everything [internal organs] was fused together,” she explained.
Now Ms Lucas documents her journey with the disease online in an attempt to remedy the “embarrassment” and “shame” she used to feel about the disease.
Getting diagnosed with endometriosis made her feel both vindicated and angry because it took a decade for her to get an answer.
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“What I’m most angry about is that I began to question myself, my own body, my own pain. There was a part of me that was scared I would wake from surgery with the Dr telling me they didn’t find anything!” She said.
Medicare is failing women and it’s About Bloody Time things changed. Around one million suffer from endometriosis. There is no cure. Help is hard to come by and in rural or regional areas, it’s virtually impossible. We are campaigning for longer, Medicare-funded consultations for endometriosis diagnosis and treatment. Read more about the campaign and sign the petition here
About Bloody Time is an editorial campaign by news.com.au that been developed in collaboration with scientists recommended by the Australian Science Media Centre, and with the support of a grant from the Walkley Foundation’s META Public Interest Journalism fund.
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2024-03-09 08:31:56Z
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