Doctors failed to spot my hidden condition for so long I was left permanently disabled

Image source, Daneka Etchells By Emma Tracey  and  Beth Rose , Disability affairs reporters Published 3 minutes ago When Daneka Etchells was 12, her period arrived - and she immediately knew something wasn't right. Unlike many of her friends, hers were extremely heavy and she experienced excruciating pain. When she visited the doctor, she was prescribed the pill, but even that didn't make a difference. After multiple further GP trips with no real solution, Etchells' condition got so bad that she was left with a permanent physical disability. She told the BBC Access All podcast that what she'd experienced over the last 17 years was "medical gaslighting". The term refers to a medical professional dismissing or invalidating health worries which can cause patients to doubt their pain and concerns. What Etchells was experiencing was endometriosis - a painful condition which affects one in 10 women - but by the time doctors found it, it had developed so much that she says it left her with permanent nerve damage. "It grew so vast and so wide and for so long, on nerves and ligaments that are attached to my legs," she says. Although doctors removed it, she now lives with a permanent physical disability. Etchells says she feels her experience of being medically ignored is being reflected in a new stage adaptation of The Secret Garden, which she is performing in. The disabled-led production touches on the idea that one of the main characters, Colin, was himself medically gaslit. The original classic was published 115 years ago and follows 10-year-old Mary, who moves to her absent uncle's big, old house, where she finds a locked-up garden and her disabled cousin Colin hidden away. In the new stage version, Colin advocates for himself and is finally listened to. Image source, Lloyd Evans Image caption, The Cumbria-born actress is playing Martha, a maid, in a newly adapted version of The Secret Garden at Theatre Royal Bath Etchells says her own breakthrough happened when she saw a female GP who put her on medication and referred her to a gynaecologist. It takes, on average, nine years to get a diagnosis. For Etchells, who is neurodivergent, it was 17. But by then, she says the damage was already done. The last straw came when Etchells was playing Lucius in Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare's Globe, an iconic London theatre many actors can only dream of performing at. What should have been a celebratory career moment for Etchells actually made her realise work had become impossible. Soon afterwards, she was forced to take six months off. "I was using my walking stick pretty much all the time at that point and I could barely get up the stairs", she says. "I felt so under the weather, so fatigued and in so much pain." Etchells says she felt "trapped" in her own body and "really immobile", with periods so painful and heavy, and bladder and bowel problems so severe, that she couldn't leave the house for months at a time. Unable to wait any longer for treatment on