Emma Barnett: We can't ignore this disease that leaves one in 10 women like me in agony

Emma Barnett: We can't ignore this disease that leaves one in 10 women like me in agony 7 minutes ago Share Save Add as preferred on Google Emma Barnett BBC Radio 4 Today programme presenter BBC The BBC's Emma Barnett was diagnosed with endometriosis a decade ago Chloe is making one of the hardest decisions a woman can make. After previous surgery failed to reduce the "horrendous" pain caused by her endometriosis, she is planning to have hysterectomy at the age of 26 - removing her womb and ending her chances of having a child. "I'm at the point now where I would not be able to look after a child. It wouldn't be fair. I just want everything out," she told me at her home in Edinburgh, while fighting back tears. "I know it's not a cure but I need to have a better quality of life." Chloe is one of the women I met over the six months I spent travelling the UK, investigating how the condition we share is affecting women's lives for the documentary Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis . It left me more convinced than ever that this invisible disease - which affects one in 10 women of reproductive age but lives in the shadows - is a silent medical emergency that doctors, researchers and policy-makers cannot ignore or overlook any longer. A common myth is that it is a painful period condition. That is wrong: endometriosis is a system-wide inflammatory disease. Cells, similar to those which line the womb, start to grow in other parts of the body - such as on the bowel or in the lungs - and multiply, creating raw and angry sores. Activated by the hormones of the menstrual cycle, these sores thicken and bleed each month, inflaming and scarring the surrounding tissue. Women can experience a range of symptoms depending on where their endometriosis is, or which organs are stuck together with scar tissue, but the hallmark of this condition is bone-grinding, life-altering pain. "I've always got some form of deep ache, then I get these flare-ups where I feel I can't speak, I can't sleep, I can't eat, I can't do anything. It is horrendous, there is nothing that will ever, ever compare," Chloe told me. Dame Hilary Mantel wrote of her experiences of trying to live with endometriosis: "Anything I have achieved has been in the teeth of the disease." The late Wolf Hall author's choice of the word "teeth" was perfect and it is one I think of most days, as I grit my own. I was diagnosed 10 years ago, just before starting work at the BBC, as my husband and I were trying and failing to have children naturally. But I had known deep down something wasn't right with me since the age of 10, when my periods and hormone cycle activated. It had taken a full 21 years to be diagnosed. The average amount of time it takes to be diagnosed in the UK is nine years and four months, according to a survey of more than 3,000 women with the condition by the charity, Endometriosis UK. For women in ethnic minority communities, it is even longer: 11 years. For Madalitso, who came to the UK from