Carla Cressy details her battle with debilitating endometriosis

Endometriosis is not taken seriously for a long time. It's been put in this, you know, it's just a period issue box, but it really is so much more than that. Carla's outstanding because she has suffered immensely for 11 years with endometriosis before getting diagnosed. She's had numerous surgeries and through all this adversity in her life, she's made such a positive impact and thought, no, I've got to do something for other women. I can't let other women suffer like I have. I was first seen by a gynaecologist just 14 years old, with all these symptoms of endometriosis, and I'm now 25. It progressed to frozen pelvis disease, so all my organs were just covered in endometriosis and so much scar tissue that they were just stuck together and unable to function, which was why my bowel had stopped working. All my reproductive organs were completely ruined and it also actually destroyed my bladder. So I had this diagnosis of endometriosis, which I'd never heard about. I'd never even heard the name and then when I googled it, there was very, very little information available about it. And so, kind of during that time of preparing for surgeries, recovery, having treatments, I started to set up the Endometriosis Foundation. Colour has spearheaded a national campaign and I'm hoping a global one, for streamlining the pathway for how individuals access their services and enabling them to recognise their symptoms and actually being vigilant about them. Carla and the Endometriosis Foundation have quite simply changed my life for I had one leaflet that we now provide in AGP surgery when I was 11. My life could have been completely different. We launched the Endometriosis Foundation just last year in the House of Lords and since then we've really focused our time on raising awareness through education, but most importantly support. She's raised enough money to set up a nurse LED helpline, so anybody all over the country, any woman can phone up this helpline to be signposted to where they need to be with their gynaecological problems just to share what they're going through the foundation's website. The information's very clear, very easy to understand and it's all lived experiences. So there was lots of kind of similar scenarios and similar situations that I'd been in that I was able to relate to and get some kind of advice from from people going through the same thing. A true hero is somebody who can transform a negative experience into a complete +1 and empower individuals to take things forward in a positive way. And Carla is that individual for me.