Girls writer and actress Lena Dunham spent years struggling with pain and worrying about her undiagnosed condition
Lena Dunham has opened up about her very long and painful battle with endometriosis, a condition where the lining of the uterus grows in other parts of the body.
The 29-year-old star details in an emotional new blog post for her Lenny website how she struggled with agonising symptoms for many years before being diagnosed, including vaginal bleeding, severe abdominal cramps and exhaustion.
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It had a devastating effect on her life, often leaving her unable to function when studying at college and later whilst beginning her career.
The pain began when she was a teenager and Lena recalls how it was became so bad that she was taken to hospital.
‘From the first time I got my period, it didn’t feel right,’ she explains.
‘The stomachaches began quickly and were more severe than the mild-irritant cramps seemed to be for the blonde women in pink-hued Midol commercials.
‘Those might as well have been ads for yogurt or the ocean, that’s how little they conveyed my experience of menstruating.
‘During the worst of it, my father brought me to the ER, where they prodded my appendix and suggested it might be food poisoning and that we should go home and wait it out.
‘My mother placed a pillow under my lower back, and I moaned in the guest room, where no one could hear me, my legs spread like a woman in labour.’
Lena continued to be blighted by agonising symptoms throughout her years at college and the beginning of her career, though tried to keep it to herself.
‘I hid my pain as best I could,’ she says. ‘On the set of my film Tiny Furniture, I spent my first lunch break hiding on the toilet, begging the lone female crew member to bring me Midol, heavy barbiturates, or any combination thereof.’
Her undiagnosed symptoms left Lena feeling deeply distressed and she says she ‘lost all trust in or connection to my own body. I was a floating head.’
Eventually the American star was diagnosed with endometriosis during the first series of Girls and has been receiving treatment ever since.
She now hopes to raise awareness of the debilitating condition and hopes other women will learn to listen to their bodies.
‘I am one of many women who grasp for a sense of consistent wellbeing, fight against the betrayals of their bodies, and who are often met with scepticism by doctors trained to view painful periods as the lot of women who should learn to grin and bear it,’ says Lena.
‘All along the way, a massive fear of mine was “being discovered,” that someone would decide I wasn’t strong enough for my work or my life because of what I dealt with physically and emotionally. But I am strong because of what I’ve dealt with.’
Anna Francis
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