Without the surgery to confirm an endometriosis diagnosis, Ella started to feel like the pain was all in her head 

It started when Ella was 14.

Bleeding that lasted weeks at a time. Pain that was so disruptive she was forced to miss school for days. Periods so irregular Ella never really knew when they would return.

When she went to see a doctor about it in her small town about 300 kilometres south-east of Adelaide, Ella says she was told it was normal for people her age to have irregular periods.

She left the practice with a script for the pill in hand. It’d be the first in a series of medical appointments to try and fix what was going on inside her body. It didn’t work, but she kept trying.

Over three years, she’s been prescribed different versions of the pill, a contraceptive injection, then an IUD and, eventually, a medication to temporarily shut…