You're listening to Mistreated. I'm Nam Kiwanuka.

Today we're recording this intro from TVO's control room. So, a different background from normal.

Earlier this season, we spoke with Dr. Matthew Leonardi, a leading endometriosis researcher and surgeon.

He described the conditions this way, that endometriosis behaves like a cancer.

Dr. Leonardi stressed that endometriosis is a full body disease and that it needs to be treated as a priority condition.

Historically, it has been treated as just a gynecological condition. That may make your blood boil like it does mine.

Gynecological conditions should also be treated as priority conditions, but in the world we live in, they simply are not.

Up until recently, the only way to get definitively diagnosed with endometriosis was through keyhole surgery.

Let that sink in for a moment that until recently the only way to diagnose someone with endometriosis was through surgery.

Even though it's labeled as non-invasive surgery, surgery is surgery.

It's one thing to speak to an expert about endometriosis and it's important to understand what the condition is, but it's a completely different reality to live with it.

We wanted to speak with someone with endrois about what it's like to navigate a condition that impacts so many women.

Yet there is no cure and it can take years, sometimes decades to get a diagnosis.

I came across Evelyn Scott's journey with endometriosis on Instagram.

It took 15 years for her to be diagnosed with endometriosis.

She eventually decided to have a hyctomy.

But if you remember from our conversation with Dr. Leonardi, a hyerectomy isn't a cure for endometriosis.

However, some women have been led to believe that it is.

Evelyn tells me in our conversation that she knew a hyerectomy wouldn't cure her endo, but she was desperate for any relief.

Sadly, the symptoms came back almost immediately.

Evelyn is currently writing a book called A Bloody Scandal about living with endometriosis and her fight to get the care she needed.

She joins me now. Hi, Evelyn Scott. Welcome to the podcast.

>> Hi. How are you doing?

>> I'm great. It's such a pleasure to speak to you. Uh could you please introduce yourself to our listeners?

>> So, my name is Evelyn Scott. I'm an author and I have a book coming out next year about medical misogyny and about my journey with endometriosis and I also advocate for women with gynecological diseases like endo and adenomiiosis and things.

Uh I'm so glad that we connected. I actually saw your story posted on Instagram and you were sharing that um 6 months after you had a hyctomy.

Actually, I should preface it all this by saying that this is your story. If I ask you something that you're not comfortable talking about, just say, "Na'am, I don't want to talk about that." Okay.

>> Um, so,

so you had uh the story that I saw you posted that after 6 months of getting a hyctomy, your endometriosis came back.

Um, I want to talk about the journey that led to that. But first, I would like to get a sense of what does it feel like?

Because I think we hear a lot about endometriosis, but we don't fully understand how it impacts somebody's body and how it makes your body feel.

>> It's really difficult and it's nice to see people talking about it nowadays, but I think there's still this misunderstanding of what it is as a disease.

I mean, there's a lot of debate and research going on about whether it truly is a gynecological disease or an immune system disease.

Um, but it's tough. I mean, since my first period, I've suffered from horrendously painful periods.

Periods that mean I have to take time off school, college, work, um really, really heavy bleeding.

And those are the main symptoms that are known, but they come with a myriad of other things like dream fatigue, um being a unable to focus, brain fog, um very painful sex, and pain when you go to the toilet.

It affects your whole life. So it is effectively a whole body disease.

Um and it becomes very hard to deal with and live with especially because the available treatments don't really work.

So it's a daily battle and I think every day is different.

Um we spoke to um a specialist by the name of Dr. Matthew Leonardi and uh he takes care of people with endometriosis and he told us that there is no cure for endometriosis.

And what's really important uh is for people to get a diagnosis as quickly as they can.

I read that in the UK it can take on average up to eight years to get a diagnosis.

How long did it take for you to get your diagnosis?

>> It took me 15 years. Um I'm actually at the extreme end.

Um and the problem we encounter not just in the UK but in every country there's still this if women are in pain it's hysteria. It's an emotional issue. We're all exaggerating.

Um, and that's certainly what I experienced.

So, I spent years going to the doctor and them saying, you know, you're just having a period. You need to tough it up. Everybody else has a period. They're not being rushed into hospital all the time.

So, you get dismissed and I call it medical gaslighting.

So, you're made to believe that it's all in your head.

Um, but I mean I was being rushed into accident and emergency departments all over, spending weeks at a time in hospital.

And the only reason that I got diagnosed was because on one of those visits, there just happened to be an endometriosis specialist on call that day who came into my cubicle and I I spoke to him expecting the same dismissals and he said, you know, I think you've got endometriosis.

And I was kind of like, where have you been for the last 15 years?

Like um yeah, but I mean I speak to so many women all over the world and it it takes a long time for them to have their symptoms taken seriously and I think it's pretty common for it to be around eight years, but it is a postcode lottery.

So if you happen to live in an area where there are endometriosis specialists and there are doctors that are very sympathetic towards women's pain and have an interest in women's health, you may get seen quicker because when I had my first surgery, I was in bed ne in the ward next to a girl who was 18 who just had her first diagnostic surgery.

Um and I remember feeling, you know, like what did she do that I didn't do?

So, it's a very individual thing and no case is the same and I think that's one of the problems and why it takes so long to diagnose.

>> How many surgeries have you had? You said your first surgery.

>> So, I've had five now, including my hyerectomy.

Um, they want to do another one.

Um, but the thing is with the surgeries there, they don't guarantee any relief afterwards and it's one hell of a procedure to go through.

Um they say the recovery is three to four days which is completely inaccurate.

You're out of action for at least well threequarters of a month and then if you're lucky you might get a year's relief but that wasn't the case for me.

I was getting about 6 months relief at a time.

Um and this is how I've been with my hysterctomy as well.

In fact it took me about 6 months to recover and then a month later I was in pain again.

So um when you speak to women with endometriosis, they usually have had a lot of surgeries, but that is also the only way to diagnose it at the moment.

So it doesn't show up on any scans.

Um help me understand that a little bit because uh the specialist that we spoke to, he has received additional training.

So the way that people make surgery sound, it's like it's oh it's like uh a non-invasive surgery, but really any surgery does something to your body.

And it blows my mind because I keep thinking of other conditions that other people have uh that require that in order for you to get diagnosed, you need to have surgery.

>> Yeah, there are very few.

I mean there is development into non-invasive methods going on out there.

I mean there's um in the Feinstein Institute, they're looking at ways to test using menstrual blood um but they're just not getting enough funding to be able to test that on a larger scale.

Um, so so the only way to find out if you have it is through surgery.

And we're all crying out really for there to be non-invasive methods.

I mean, there's some people who believe that you can um diagnose it through blood tests and maybe in some rare occurrences you can.

If you have a deep infiltrating um disease of endometriosis, it sometimes comes up on scans, but I have deep infiltrating endo and it didn't come up on scans for me.

So, it's it's it's quite frustrating.

So, you do have to be operated on to to get any definitive answers really.

I've read about the NHS uh weight lists and the gynecology weight list similar to what's happening here in Canada.

um it takes a long time to see a gynecologist and if you need surgery then you need to wait.

I was told that I needed to have to wait for two years for my fibroid surgery.

So in the interim um my doctor I was given a cocktail of medication that did different things to my body.

Um because before it's diagnosed or to treat it you have to manage your dayto-day.

Before your hyctomy you would actually take a cocktail of medication and laxatives to get through the day.

How many pills did you take to manage uh how you were feeling?

>> Gosh, you know, I lost count.

I used to joke with my nan that if you shook me, I'd sound like a rattle because I was popping so many pills all the time.

I mean, it's really tricky because when you're taking a lot of pain medication, which you kind of need to if you're in those levels of pain, you then get other side effects like constipation, which can result in bowel obstructions, which is what I had.

So, I ended up having to take laxatives every day and that meant that even though I was eating, I wasn't getting any nutrients in my body.

So, my hair started to fall out.

Um, and it's the same with hormonal medication.

A lot of hormonal medication can make you feel tired.

It can give you really bad hormonal migraines.

So when you're stuck on these waiting lists and they are about 2 years here to even have an initial consultation with a gynecologist and then if you go on the surgery you're probably waiting at least a year if not two.

Um you do have to manage in that time and unfortunately you do just get pills thrown at you and it's very much a case of you know let's try and see what works.

Um, and a lot of the time it doesn't work, but we're so desperate.

We're going to take this medication just so we can have quality of life.

Um, you mentioned that when you did see doctors who are medical professionals who are who go to school for many years to learn how to treat people who are ill.

Um, doctors were dismissing your pain and they were gaslighting you.

And from my own experiences like with my personal relationships, I think some of my friends just got tired of me cancelling plans or I just can't do this because I was reserving whatever energy I had for work and to take care of my kids.

How has this illness impacted your personal life?

>> Um, well, it's completely erased my personal life to be completely honest with you.

I I mean obviously I've I'm write I've just written a book but before then I couldn't work at all because my health and pain levels was was so um unpredictable.

I didn't know how I was going to feel daytoday relationshipwise.

I have become that friend like you say that always cancels and I hate doing it.

And there's been there have been people who understand, there are people who don't.

Um, which is always tricky.

But from an intimate relationship side, I can't have them because I sex hurts me.

Um, anything any intimacy at all hurts me.

Um, and I did have a long-term relationship.

And he actually got fed up with me because I was in and out of hospital all the time.

Um, I couldn't arrange I couldn't go meet his friends. I couldn't hang out with him because I just didn't know how I was going to feel on any given day.

So now I try and like you say, you know, I reserve my energy for things that I deem very important and that isn't always socializing, which is a shame, but I have connected with amazing women online who do have the same conditions as me.

And I actually went to an event by the Menstrual Health Project on Friday where there were a load of probably about hundred of us and we were all talking about these issues about not being able to have friendships, not being able to connect and you know and it was it was lovely to actually be with people who understand.

So the endometriosis community is very welcoming and incredibly supportive and I'm so grateful for that cuz I've made some brilliant friends and they understand.

So, always a bonus.

>> Um, because I I I don't know if people can really understand what it's like to kind of like plan your day according to how you're feeling because, uh, when your cycle comes around, the pain intensifies for some people.

Um, you've been rushed to the hospital many times.

You mentioned how many times, like how often would you end up in the hospital?

>> At least twice a month.

Um, my ovulation was incredibly painful.

Um, and I would, you know, I'd be lying in bed trying to figure out whether it was endometriosis pain or if something had ruptured like my appendix or something.

Sometimes it's very difficult to tell.

And you get very good at tolerating pain, which is also not great because you don't always know if something's really wrong.

So, I would get rushed in regularly during ovulation.

Um, I'd be woken up in the night sometimes in pain and I'd reach for an opioid medication and it wouldn't work.

So, I would, you know, be at the end of my tether, I'd be throwing up, um, being unable to see because I was in so much pain that I would just have to call an ambulance.

Um, I think at my worst, so over couple of Christmases ago, I had a bowel obstruction.

I was probably in hospital um for 25 days of the month including Christmas Eve because I was just in horrendous pain and wasn't coping at all.

>> Can you explain that to us a little bit because you said that um it started to impact your other organs in what ways?

>> So I have endometriosis on my bow um which means that it's incredibly painful for me to go to the toilet.

Um, if I just I'll go to the toilet and I'll get these spasmodic pains that last for a good few hours.

Sometimes I won't be able to go to the toilet at all because it's so painful that I end up having to take a laxative to try and relax all my muscles cuz my body just sort of almost goes into crisis mode and cramps up.

I also have it on my kidneys which means I get a lot of kidney infections.

Um, I know a lot of people with endometriosis get a lot of uh urinary tract infections, but mine for some bizarre reason don't start there.

And if they do it, I don't get any symptoms.

I only realize when I've got the kidney infection.

But you can also get endometriosis on your lungs, which is incredibly dangerous.

And it can it can also result in you throwing up menstrual blood when you're on your period and can result to collapsed lungs.

So although it's not considered a deadly disease, it can cause organs to fail.

Um, and it it really does attack the body and organs and then you'll get symptoms that correlate with the organ that it's attacking and it's frightening.

>> Um, it's it's when you when you describe all of that, it's kind of maddening then that it's kind of um shrunken into oh, it's just a period.

Um, I want to go back to that day when you were in the hospital and that the doctor was there to be able to uh give you that diagnosis that you had been waiting for for so long.

How was your endometriiosis diagnosed?

>> Um, through surgery. So, I gave him a list of my symptoms.

He felt my abdom my abdomen and my groin and said, you know, I was very very sensitive there.

He suspected I had endometriosis.

We did a scan and the scan came back normal and then he said, "Right, I'm going to refer you for a laparoscopy surgery and that's what I had."

And then I came to and he was standing beside me with an iPad and he handed me this iPad and it was my insides and they were just stre with endometriosis presents as like black streaks sometimes and it was just black and he was like, "These are your insides. you've you know there's a lot of endometriosis there. We've removed what we can but yeah you have endometriosis

and I think mine was so bad because it had been left for so long because I mean everybody's difference everybody's endo can grow at a different speed but I think because mine was left for so many years mine just got worse and worse and worse and by the time it was diagnosed my body was pretty much disabled.

I do class myself as disabled now because I don't I can't see an end in sight because it took so long to be diagnosed.

But I am grateful for the diagnosis.

I know a lot of people find that funny that people would be relieved, but actually [clears throat] when you know that there's a reason for your discomfort and you've been gaslit for so many years, you kind of feel vindicated cuz you like, you know, I wasn't lying.

I've been telling the truth.

I have been this poorly my entire life and nobody has listened to me and then you feel like there's going to be a cure.

Um that's how I felt at the time.

I thought right well now I've got the diagnosis there's going to be this care plan we're going to sort it out everything's okay which sadly isn't the case for conditions like endometriosis.

>> Um no I get that.

Uh when I had my surgery, I asked the surgeon to take a picture of the fibroids.

And when I saw the picture, it was like that affirmation of it wasn't just in my head.

Uh it wasn't just me being weak.

It wasn't just me not being strong enough.

Yeah. It's really emotional. So I understand that.

Um did you know what endosiosis was before you were diagnosed with it?

So, I'd spoken to a sexual health nurse a couple of years before and she said that I could have endometriosis, but if I did have it, it would have shown up on the scans, which I now know not to be true.

But when she said that to me, I did go away and look it up.

And I did think, you know, that does match what I'm experiencing, you know, and so I was pretty adamant that I needed this referral to gynecology so that we could explore this because it sounded very similar to what I had.

Um, but there isn't a lot out there regarding endometriosis.

There's more now, but back then it was, you know, there was a few things about symptoms and you need to see a gynecologist and that was kind of it.

But I had a rough idea.

It was only when I started going on social media and using #endometriosis that I learned so much about it myself.

Um, but I've learned through other people.

That's what's quite sad about it.

I haven't been educated through medical professionals or been told by doctors what it is and and why it causes these problems.

It's through the other endometriosis the community members.

we've sort of all banded together and put these this information together because we can't get it anywhere else.

>> Um that's the thing that's um um really upsetting because the people who are supposed to treat you don't even know about the disease itself.

I just recently learned that there's no cure for endometriosis.

>> Yeah.

>> Why did you make the decision to have a hyctomy?

So, I'd heard stories that people who'd had a hyerectomy had felt much better afterwards because they'd stopped producing the estrogen.

Um, and I was desperate. Absolutely desperate.

I mean, in the leadup to my hyerectomy, I was spending every day in bed.

I was on a lot of painkillers.

I couldn't focus.

I I couldn't do anything.

My quality of life was awful.

My mental health also took a hideous decline because I just felt like I couldn't live like this anymore.

So, it was something that I hadn't thought of or tried.

And I mentioned it to my gynecologist and he said, you know, you're too young to have this operation.

You may want children.

And I remember saying to him, you know, I can't even look after myself.

How the hell am I going to have children?

I, you know, I'm living on a sofa.

Um, so he said, you know, we're not going to do it.

let's try more surgery, more other surgeries to remove it.

But I just had enough, which is why I decided to fund raise for mine because I got sick and tired of being told by other doctors as well that I was too young and that I may want children.

Um, and what's ironic about that is that endometriosis can also cause infertility.

So it's it just felt like a really strange message to be giving me that, you know, I may want children when actually I probably couldn't have children anyway.

So for me, my priority was trying to get back my quality of life.

And I I knew that it wasn't a cure.

Um I just hoped for a little bit more relief than I than I got.

>> 6 months later, uh you say the pain came back.

>> Yeah. And I knew exactly what pain it was.

Um because you you know it after living with it for years.

Um so the recovery was really rough.

Um much worse than I expected to be.

The pain was horrendous.

Um but I kind of felt like it was going to be worth it.

And I did get like a couple of weeks where I felt really good.

Like I was going out on long dog walks, you know, I was staying up longer.

I wasn't so tired all the time.

Um so there was a a point where I was like, you know, brilliant. It's fixed.

And you know, it may come back in a year, but that's fine.

You know, I'm going to get a year of of quality life.

Um, but that wasn't meant to be, unfortunately.

Um, and when I went back to the gynecologist, although it's common for endometriosis to return, he was completely beused by it.

He said, you know, you should you should feel better than you do.

And I was like, you know, I know, right? What's going on?

>> How did that make you feel with the doctor saying that?

>> I felt really frustrated.

Um, also I felt like I'd gone back to the drawing board again and kind of like I was at the end of this road where there was nowhere else for me to go and no one else knew what to do about it.

Like from here it was like we'd thrown everything at it.

So I felt pretty defeated.

Um, my depression was quite bad for a while because I just felt like, you know, this is it now.

I'm going to be living in pain for the rest of my life.

This is awful.

How am I going to cope?

Um, so yeah, it's frustrating and it's even more frustrating knowing that there's very little funding going into women's health because I feel like if I knew that there was lots of funding going into it and we were trying to discover ways to cure and to learn more about this disease, then I would feel positive for the future.

But at the moment, it still feels like we're, you know, we've got a very Victorian attitude towards women's health.

And yeah, it's it's disappointing and I do feel let down by the systems that were supposed to make me better, you know.

>> Um I'm not I don't know how to ask this question because I don't want to be insensitive at all.

Um when you had the hyctomy, you knew that it wouldn't be uh a cure.

And I keep thinking of the millions of women because uh the WHO says uh one in 10 women and gender diverse people have endometriosis.

Uh the doctors we spoke to said that that number is probably higher because it's so difficult to get a diagnosis.

And they also said that the longer it takes to get a diagnosis uh the worse the disease becomes.

And they actually recommend that um once you start to menrate and you have pain that you should be diagnosed for endometriosis because it starts um early.

And you know, uh, so you had you had to make this kind of decision to just get some kind of whatever relief you could get.

And now you've had this really big surgery. That's kind of, you know, that was the thing that you were looking for maybe a year of not having the pain, but it only ended up being six months.

Um, again, I don't want to be insensitive in asking this question.

Uh, I'm just trying to figure out like when you think back about the surgery, do you regret it?

>> I do.

Um, and I was speaking to someone again at this conference on Friday about this because it was one hell of a recovery.

>> Yeah.

Um, and you know, when I I've recovered from surgeries before where I've had to stay in bed, but I've managed to go to the toilet or go make myself a cup of tea, whereas this was such a deep pain that kind of felt like it was everywhere and you have to do blood thinning injections yourself.

Um, and as somebody who doesn't really like needles, that was that was pretty terrifying for me.

So, in hindsight, I kind of feel that I put myself through something really, really horrific that hasn't actually helped me.

Um, the only the only regret I don't have is I don't have periods because my heavy bleeding was horrific.

I mean, from my first period, I used to bleed through sanitary towels, through clothes.

I was scared of going to sleepovers with my friends because I'd bleed all over their beds and stuff.

So I don't miss the bleeding.

Um but the pain is is frustrating.

Um but I think there is a message out there from medical professionals that a hyerectomy will fix it and that is completely incorrect.

It's not true and there is no cure for endometriosis.

But again everyone's journey is so different.

I mean, there are people I know who've had one surgery, um, one ablation, which is the lasering off of endometriosis, and they've never had a problem afterwards.

They've had no pain.

They haven't had to go back.

And then you get cases like mine where you have to keep going back.

There's no there's not enough research to say why people suffer these symptoms so differently.

And you can have very small amounts of endometriosis, like technically a mild case of endometriosis and have horrific pain.

And yet there are people with a lot of endometriosis that don't suffer pain.

So it's very strange and how it affects people.

It's is very different and that's what we need to know understand more about I think.

>> Um you mentioned that there was that frustration of the pain coming back.

Um, but I'm I imagine too like they not to put words in your mouth.

Um, but these um when I had my fibroids, I found it to be such a an isolating and lonely experience and going through the surgery and how long it took for my body.

Like my surgery was about a year and a half.

I still have pain.

Um, but there's also like the time like I you miss out on so much and I don't I I also don't miss the the bleeding.

Um, and then sometimes I don't want to say anything because I don't want to seem ungrateful, but then there's just like this underlining, it feels like a loss, like uh there's this like grief you try to kind of reconcile with yourself.

Um, how do you navigate that grief?

>> Um, so I'd already resigned myself to having a hyerectomy.

That was my mission.

and I have so I'm one of five siblings and most of them have children so I'm surrounded by children and I did want children when I was younger um and

but I kind of was like you know I'm surrounded by children it would be great to be able to spend time with my nieces and nephews without having to worry about being in pain um and to cope with that that feeling I actually this is going to make you laugh I I have lots of animals [laughter]

um I I I have two amazing dogs.

I have three horses who fill my time and they are very much my babies.

And um that's kind of how I navigate it.

When I feel sad and when I feel lonely, I just give my dogs a cuddle.

And also just reaching out to the endometriosis community because there are so many women out there who are really struggling with this.

And just being able to talk to somebody who totally gets it is great.

I mean, there's a lot of us who have regrets about thing treatments we've tried and things.

I mean, I I have a lot of internal scar tissue from my operations, um, which is something I wasn't warned about at all, and that can be incredibly painful as well.

So, I wasn't very informed at the time of my surgeries.

Um, and I kind of wish I was because I would have maybe been able to make a more informed decision.

But there is this feeling of loss where you, you know, you trust your doctors because that's what you're taught to do.

Um, but there's this sense of distrust that comes now where you don't trust doctors so much, which is frustrating and really sad and not a lot of people get it, I don't think.

>> Yeah, I I get it.

And uh the scar tissue, not many people talk about scar tissue because it can actually end up um like making your organs fuse together internally which can yeah require more surgeries.

>> Uh you are a light uh online for for um a lot of people who are struggling with this because some people have not everyone is going to have the um the courage to talk about this.

Um, and you're fighting back against a very large system.

You're writing a book.

Um, is it still being called Bloody Scandal or

>> Yes, it is. Yeah. Um,

why did you decide to write a book?

>> So, I was just so fed up of being ignored and it did come about during my bow obstruction.

I remember being sat in the waiting room and just being so stressed and angry.

It was Christmas Eve and it started off with me going on Instagram and looking up endometriosis and seeing all these women and I was just like why is this happening?

Like why is no one doing anything?

Cuz I thought it was just me that I was an isolated case and then when I realized it was happening to so many women.

I just found myself getting really angry.

You know what it's like when you're sitting there and you're just winding yourself up about it, thinking about it.

And I come from an academic background.

So my first idea was to write an article.

And then when I started collecting all this information and speaking to to so many women, I was like this this is never going to work in an article form.

It's bigger than that.

It's we've got to look at the systemic failures.

We've got to interrogate these medical systems and find out why they're not working and try and figure out how to make some serious change because something's got to change.

Um and that's kind of how it came about actually.

And I met my agent.

I was on uh the news and she I actually reached out to her about about this book and she'd actually seen me on the news and said she was going to contact me about writing a book.

So it was this really weird moment of of fate kind of.

So yeah,

>> but I think it's going to help uh people be able to navigate a very large system.

Um, what do you want to say to doctors who are listening to this and h what they should uh say to their patients, patients who are maybe trying to get a diagnosis for endometriosis.

I think we need to be more open and honest about what we know about these conditions.

Um, rather than say, you know, you're being dramatic or dismissing a patient, you need to be honest and say, we don't know a lot about indometriosis.

We're still learning about it.

This is what we know. this is what we don't know so the patients can make an informed decision and also I'm kind of sick of hear of say people saying you need to keep fighting you need to keep fighting to be listened to I don't think we should have to you know I I'm sick of the onus being put on the individual it feels like victim blaming it's like this is not our job you guys need to be doing this work and you're not doing this work we need more research into endometriosis and women's health conditions in general and we need better training and we need doctors who want to help people.

I think we've lost this caring doctor image and that used to exist when I was a child.

You had this uh family doctor who would know everything about you.

We've lost that now.

We're we're just we feel like numbers and we need to get back some of that sensitivity and genuine care for our patients because at the moment it just feels like it's not there.

>> And if I hear one more person say, "Oh, you're so resilient."

I don't want to be resilient. [laughter]

>> I get that. I'm like, I'm not I'm really really tired, really stressed.

[laughter] It's exhausting being resilient.

Um Evelyn, before we before we end our conversation, is there anything that you'd like to add?

>> Just thank you for having me, you know, and thank you for raising awareness of this condition.

And you know, I also want to mention PMDD because that's something that we're talking about recently and that's prevailent.

You know, it's it's everywhere and we really need to start talking about that.

And I think there's this reluctance to speak about mental health with women's health because it so often gets weaponized against women in pain.

But there is a relationship and it does affect, you know, these conditions do affect mental health.

So, we need to be better at supporting people who are suffering.

Can you let us know what that is? I know it's a menration uh what is PMDDD?

>> So it's premenstrual dys dis dysmorphic disorder. I can't say it. I keep saying it.

But it basically affects the mood quite badly and it's an it gives you extreme depression.

So you get things like suicide ideiation, extreme anxiety, extreme mood swings.

And people often dismiss it as some, you know, she's just hormonal.

She's just, you know, a raging woman, but it has a real effect on women.

My sister has it and she falls into these deep pits of depression that she can't get out of and there's been no support for her at all with it.

Um, she's just received diagnosis, but there's been no treatment and I think that's shocking.

>> Thanks so much, Evelyn. It's been a pleasure.

>> No problem. Thank you. Bye

>> bye. This was Mistreated. Thanks for listening.

You can follow our show on Apple Podcast so you can get notified each time a new episode is available. We

would love to hear your feedback.

You can write me an email at mistreatedodcast.org or reach out to me on my social channels.

Here's a comment from YouTube on last week's episode on clinical trials.

1993 was a year of allout bangers.

Long live the golden age of hashtagmusic.

For real though, thank you for anchoring a critical moment of women's rights with this popular history landmark.

Glad to see NAM is staying strong and vibrant.

Thanks so much for the Much Music Love.

This week's episode was produced by Matthew Amara and me and [music] edited by Colin Kish.

Digital shorts by Ariana Longley, camera work by Max Stussy and Ricardo Diaz.

Production support from Jonathan Hallowell and TVO's digital media services team.

Lorie F is the executive producer of digital.

John [music] Ferry is vice president programming and content.

Special thanks to our studio crew here at TBO.

Thanks so much for listening.