‘The Rose and the Cervix’, May 2026. “Finished”.
Her eyes are mournful, as though the pain she felt was somehow self-inflicted from the pleasure that had flown through her body just moments before. As though, surely, such pain must follow pleasure; like delicate fingers caressing a soft blooming peach rose, and with greedy fingers comes finding a sharp up-pointed thorn, pricking the skin and drawing blood. Such pain must follow pleasure.
‘The speculum’, April 2026. “Finished”.
Here I am, I have arrived in the room. I have brought my object; a 25x25cm blister packet of a clinical vaginal speculum. The packet is paper on one side, with a clear plastic ‘window’ side that once revealed the packet’s content. The packet has been emptied of its content. Printed on the paper side, in clinical green ink, are the words ‘Eco Gold, EN Vaginal Speculum – Unbreakable in normal use’. There are two things I find humorous about this. The first is the ‘eco’ marketing; as though vaginas are responsible for all the plastic pollution left by mega corporations, who are generally owned by men, that dump their plastic waste around the globe. Where will the speculum that has been used in my vagina end up? The second thing I find funny about the print is “unbreakable in normal use”. What is normal use? Is my vagina normal? Dare I find out that I have an abnormal vagina and the plastic speculum were to indeed not be unbreakable. The thought of it breaking and one sharp piece of clear plastic were to pierce my vagina, or vulva, does not bare thinking about. Especially not when it is inside me during a routine cervical cancer screening.
To touch the plastic side of the blister packet of the clinical vaginal speculum is like touching the non-sticky side of a length of Sellotape. I run my fingers along the top edge where there are 8 ribs of embossed lines, as though the object has run through a machine that has placed the vaginal speculum on top of the paper, and stamped a plastic sheet on top, sealing it inside its sellable packaging. This makes the speculum for sterile use, and, therefore clinical.
Speculums come in different shapes; I learn this after quite a few have been inserted into me. I have endometriosis, experiencing pain in much of my lower body. Despite telling the clinician in control of the speculum of having endometriosis, the medium is used routinely. It is only by researching do I learn that the small is best for those with endometriosis, adenomiosis, vaginismus, vulvodynia, vaginal atrophy, post-menopausal, lichen sclerosus, and those who have not had a vaginal birth. I predict this to be 50% of the UK female-bodied population in 2026.
There is research stating that speculums do not need to be used at all during cervical screening exams, known rather distastefully as ‘smear tests’, but western medical systems are so ingrained in medical misogyny that they continue to be used; holding women open for all to see, and enter at will. Who would submit to a ‘large’ speculum, when a small is available? What need is there to ever use a ‘large’ speculum? Is my vagina large or small? On this vagina-scale, how do you feel about the size of your vagina today?
Writing as the object.
I have been emptied of my contents. On one side of me, illustrates a barcode with the numbers ‘5 010058 901474’ under in clinical green ink. I presume I was made by someone and sold to someone else. I am made by ‘Vernacare’, from Robinson Healthcare Ltd on Lawn Road, Carlton-in-Lindrick, in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. The business is addressed to Advena Ltd, Tower Business Centre, on the 2nd Floor, on Tower Street in Swatar, Malta. I know, therefore, whatever profit is made by selling my contents, that the company who owns me has not paid any income taxes, or paid any taxes on the commercial property of who owns me. I wonder how the people of Malta feel about Advena Ltd. Is there enough room for the people of Malta to live? Where are their houses in relation? Whatever my contents, its purpose was firstly designed to make business revenue. Regardless of the design of whatever I once held, and the ability, or inability, my content had to be functional or unfunctional, I was dreamt up to make money and nothing more. The languages on me state ‘EN, BG, CS, DA, DE, EL, ES, ET, FI, GA, HR, HU, IT, LT, LV, MT, NL, PL, SK, SL, SV, TR’. English, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, German, Greek, Spanish, Estonian, Finnish, Irish, Croatian, Hungarian, Italian, Lithuanian, Latvian, Maltese, Dutch, Polish, Slovakian, Slovenian, Swedish, Turkish. I think I was made to distribute across the global north. What does the north have that the south does not? How will I be disposed of and where will I end up?
‘This is Endometriosis, sitting in a gallery.’ 22nd March 2026. “Finished”.
I am sitting in Camden Art Centre’s coffee shop. I had a mediocre, yet expensive, lunch and watched ‘This is Endometriosis’ by Georgie Wileman on my laptop screen, whilst sitting on a wooden table of women I don’t know. We are strangers, none of us know each other, but we feel safe here. Non-threatening, quiet, concentrating. All five of us are working from our laptops, reading books, highlighting or writing in notepads. Across the room, sits a table of men also working from their laptops. They look like business men, wearing smart clothes, and therefore, established. We look as though we are learning, earning our way into being granted access to something. There is something unbalanced and unsetttling about this.
‘This is Endometriosis’ was a deeply visceral documentary, a reminder of time and space that Georgie, along with the viewer, has had stolen to chronic pain. Days lost to bed, life missed to sickness, and the emotional turmoil that comes with being undiagnosed and medically gaslit, or at the very least ignored, leading to the self-denial of questioning one’s own reality. ‘This is Endometriosis’ blends first-person accounts of present-day style self-documented material and observational footage with memories of intimate family archive footage, granting the viewer access to embody the narrative. The documentary gives agency to the projected 190 million people with endometriosis through its functioning as a tool of self-spectatorship, where the viewer’s embodied knowledge is mirrored in the identity and experiences of the director.
In an otherwise misrepresented, misdiagnosed, misheard, and misunderstanding of the disease, despite those living with the disease accurately describing their symptoms, This is Endometriosis discusses operates as a lense in medical misogyny.
‘No caller ID’. 3rd December 2025.“Finished”.
I just received a phone call from a no caller ID. I answered. It was the secretary for the consultant who I had a telephone appointment with yesterday. I had waited for this appointment for 13 months, 2 weeks and 4 days. Over the most recent month of November 2025, my appointment at ****** Hospital had either been cancelled, rearranged, amended, or altered, in varying combinations a total of seven times. Those changes went from an in-person appointment with one consultant, to a telephone appointment with another consultant, both of which modes of appointment changed dates, or times, or fluctuated from in-person to telephone and back again. I had preemptively booked a cheaper, non-refundable train from London to Birmingham a week before my planned trip to arrive the morning before my appointment, so that I would be well prepared and on time for my 9am in-person sceduled appointment the following morning. The next day after booking my train tickets, I was phoned to say that the appointment would be over telephone, not in-person. My heart sank. I had waited 13 months, 2 weeks and 4 days for this appointment.
The original appointment was with ******, who is the lead consultant for endometriosis treatment at ****** Hospital. I had heard and read some rather bad reviews about their bedside manner, so I was relieved when my actual appointment consultant was with ******.
****** Hospital is situated in the UK's second largest city, home to the second largest population of any city in the whole of the UK, and, therefore, responsible for its large and diverse population. I predict the following statistics that of all the 51% of the population who are in a female body in Birmingham might find themselves in the margin of, at some point their lifetime, in need of healthcare for the body parts of which they own.
I estimate that of all the percentile of female reproductive organ owners, as is reflected as the rest of the UK female population:
· Including the estimated 10% of female bodies that have endometriosis (although, based on my own observations of the frequency of endometriosis symptoms, I predict a more likely figure of at least 20% of the female population has endometriosis, either with or without ‘formal’ diagnosis).
· An additional 5 - 10% who have adenomyosis combined with or without endometriosis (again, with or without ‘formal’ diagnosis).
· An additional 10% who have polycystic ovaries syndrome (known as PCOS)
· An additional 4-5% of female bodies who develop cancer in some part of their reproductive organs (e.g. vulval, vaginal, cervical, uterine, and/or ovarian cancers)
· An additional 12.5% who may require fertility treatment or experience infertility
· A further 82% percent of the female population who are either planning to become pregnant or have been pregnant – any of which resulting in abortion, miscarriage, stillborn, or a live birth.
With these statistics in mind, it's safe to assume that nearly all of us in a female body will require medical help for our reproductive organs, at least once, at some point in their lives. If not once, then twice, or several times for the same or different symptoms; for one or several diseases, syndromes, and/or pregnancies.
I will highlight here, that this appointment was the third consultant I had seen for my clear and obvious endometriosis symptoms. I had either been on the waiting list for referral or waiting for an appointment to take place for around four years. I had taken myself off waiting lists for surgeries after learning of other’s experiences of failed surgeries with specific surgeons and hospitals. I had seen 11 GPs for my symptoms who, all but one, did not take my symptoms seriously. The first time I saw a GP for my pain I was 15 years old. My pain began at 12 years old where, during that three-year time frame, I was socially conditioned that my pain was either pathological, psychological, or that “this is just part of what being a woman is", so I didn’t see a doctor for my symptoms. This rhetoric is what led to my mom being undiagnosed with endometriosis, and her mom, and her mom before that for their whole lives. This is accurate to my knowledge through familial oral history of pain experiences.
During those multiple appointments with 11 GPs, I was either told that my pain was “normal”, or “I just had a low pain threshold”, or that my ultrasound scans or MRI scans had come back “clear”. I felt gaslit by even the medical equipment. I tried three different combination pills of synthetic oestrogen and progesterone combined, the progesterone-only pill, the Mirena IUD (which hurt like hell to have inserted and is routinely done without any pain relief due to some archaic belief that the cervix doesn’t have any nerve endings), paracetamol and ibuprofen together and later combined with mefenamic acid, all three pain reliefs combined with tranexamic acid (to unsuccessfully stop or slow my bleeding, also increasing risks of stroke and heart attack), all three pain relief combined with tranexamic acid with co-codamol in varying dosages, and then again all previous mentioned pain reliefs combined with 15, and then 30, then 45, and then 60 milligrams of codeine phosphate (the maximum licensed opioid dosed).
The different multitude combinations of prescriptions did not help my pain. Two hormones left me suicidal, one gave me daily migraines, and codeine left me with an addiction problem. I am very fortunate that I had not experienced mental illness, suicide ideation or addiction prior to hormonal ‘treatment’, and feel it is important to stress this, therefore highlighting that it was a combination of the prescribed hormones, the uncontrolled pain, and medical gaslighting that left me contemplating death. When codeine was introduced into my prescription, this trifector amagamated into an obvious and predictable course of addiction.
The progesterone-only pill (desogestrel, 75mcg) caused me to excessively bleed daily for four months. I wore incontinence pads sandwiched between two pairs of underwear in attempt to catch the sheer amount of blood I was losing. At the end of those four months, I ended up in A&E in Glasgow ****** Hospital when, on an educational development programme for work, I experienced what I can only describe as a hot tap being turned on into my underwear. I had lost around half a litre of blood in a 30-second-long spell, flooding my crotch and running down my peach-coloured jeans in a restaurant, reaching down my mid-thigh, making me collapse. This was following four months of consistently, every single day without fail, lose blood in this way. Granted albeit, I had not been losing as much blood as the restaurant instance, but over the duration of four months I dread to think how many litres of blood I lost, and my body worked tirelessly to replace. I was exhausted. I was traumatised. I was barely surviving.
I was nothing short of thinking I wanted to end my life, for I did not see an end to the torment. I waited in A&E for over 9 hours throughout the entirety of one night drenched in my own blood in a room full of ill people awaiting urgent care. My favourite peach-coloured jeans saturated in blood; with my dressing ground draped around my shoulders that framed my anaemic complexion. The expression on my face would have been vacant and confused -- I don’t actually remember getting to A&E, I must have been delirious from anaemia. Anyone could have mistaken the blood in my jeans for either a stab wound in my abdomen, or perhaps even a miscarriage of pregnancy. Nobody could ever think this much blood could be lost from uterine lining. I certainly did not.
I knew how the female reproductive system and menstrual cycle worked -- I knew that, by now, I would have lost enough blood equivalent to a lifetime of menstrual cycles. There would be no lining left to bleed. I was worried the blood would have been pooling, somehow, from outside the walls of my uterus, through the walls of my uterus, dilating my cervix and falling into the world outside. How could hormonal treatment that was available to half of the population cause this to happen to me? I was desperate for this pill to work. I was tired of trying different pills that didn’t work, so I dealt with the blood loss and lethargy. The nurses and doctors I saw during the four months of consistently bleeding kept saying, “Just keep taking the pill and your periods will completely stop”, so in hope of this, I persisted.
I had no idea. I still have no idea, where all of this blood was coming from. I was exhausting all of my options, and clearly progesterone was something that did not agree with my body, because as soon as I stopped taking the progesterone that I had been prescribed, my bleeding almost completely subsided within a matter of a few days. I had tried my fair share of hormones – surely, there was nothing left I hadn't tried…
How could I translate all of this information over a telephone call to the consultant?
The consultant phoned, answering in a sort of short and sharp manner. Their first question asked “So what hormonal contraceptives have you tried?” Not ‘what symtoms do you have?’ or ‘what is your pain like?’ or ‘are you managing your usual routine?’. As if the hormonal contraceptives were the pinnacle of my efforts to try and manage my disease the very best I could. Was I really trying? Was contemplating suicide really enough? Ending up in A&E, was that enough? With such a binary question, it was impossible to add the nuances of exactly how all of these hormones and medications were really affecting me. They were making me worse.
Not being able to articulate myself in the way I wanted was making me well up. I was on the verge of tears. The notes on my phone that I had been revising like a job interview didn’t fit in to any of the questions she was asking, as though I had prepared to defend my own embodied knowledge and experiences of my own body, knowing full well they were about to be pulled apart to make me question my own reality of pain. I asked who would be doing my surgery, whether or not any of my organs would be removed, if it would be excision or ablation surgery, and whether the surgeon would be specifically trained and experienced in excision surgery for endometriosis.
The consultant was angry that I asked questions. Seeing as I would be unconscious, and at the hands of a stranger with a knife and surgical instruments, it is completely reasonable for me to be asking these very basic questions. I wanted reassurance that I was in good hands. Instead, I was met with short, snappy repies and “If you were really as ill as you say you are, you would have the surgery.” Actually, there is substantial evidence, and I personally know people who have had surgeries for endometriosis and their pain got worse post-surgery because the surgeon didn’t know what the fuck they were doing.
I have read about people having their ovaries removed without prior consent because the surgeon simply wasn’t skilled at cutting around the endometriosis on the ovary, so instead just cut it out. Some of these patients didn’t even know they had ovaries removed until years down the line during routine ultrasound scans at other hospitals.
I had read and been told what I describe as horror stories about ****** Hospital. Horror stories including a patient asking a consultant to stop during internal vaginal pelvic exam and the clinician continuing with the examination. This is sexual assault. Another horror story I was told was a patient had surgery with ****** (the lead clinician for endometriosis surgery at ****** Hospital) and afterwards the surgeon telling the patient, “You had minimially invasive, stage 1 endometriosis and I have removed it. You are cured”, for their pain to be even greater in the subsequent months. This particular patient told me that 6 months later, they had private surgery with a new consultant for their worsening pain, and finding out post-second-surgery that they actually had stage 4, deep-infultrating endometriosis. This means that the first surgeon actually did nothing in the first surgery to remove their endometriosis. I imagine here, that ****** went into the surgery, completely unprepared for dealing with endometriosis and its extremely varying extents in how it can spread on any organ in the body and continued to gaslight the patient post-surgery instead of referring them to a more equipped hospital. I cannot imagine how disorienting this would be for the patient. Endometriosis is also currently uncurable.
It’s safe to say that in knowing these horror stories, I had my reservations at the hospital. I also asked the consultant why they hadn’t asked what my symptoms are and how it impacts my life. I heard a sigh down the phone, followed by a monotone, almost like a downtrodden Patty and Selma Bouvier from The Simpsons impression, “So, what are your symptoms?” The way it was asked was not inquisitive, as though they cared about my answers. In my answer of a very long list including; consistent pain around my uterus all-month round; painful menstruation that is so intense I cannot leave the house and often is so intense that I lose consciousness when I am stood up or even sitting on the toilet; missing key moments in my life due to pain; pain when having a bowel movement... The consultant stopped me there and interrupted in their monotonous voice, “Painful bowel movements are not a symptom of endometriosis.” I explained that it is and that I had simply Googled some years ago ‘pain when shitting on my period and ovulating’ and endometriosis is the first thing that Google suggests. The consultant continued to argue their point. I gave up. If a leading clinician of endometriosis in a women’s hospital in the UK’s second largest city doesn’t know the clear symptom of painful bowel movements being a symptom of endometriosis, then I am definitely not trusting them with a knife on my unconscious body.
I was also asked to try ‘one more hormonal option -- GnRH’. How would artificially being induced into chemical menopause and having my natural hormones being replaced by synthetic ones help? Had I not endured enough trial and error (mostly error) of synthetic hormones? What if I were to try this and then actually kill myself as a result of the hormones? If desogestrel (1 x 75mcg daily progesterone pill) can successfully make me contemplate suicide then chemically having all of my natural hormones blocked, along with the risks of permanent bone density loss from GnRH, and the symptoms of menopause; hot flushes, night sweats, vaginal dryness, mood swings, fatigue, and reduced libido, might definitely kill me.
[How GnRH was developed]...
After a traumatising 20 minute phone call that seemed to last forever, the consultant reluctantly offered me the laparoscopic excision surgery I had been needing and requesting for over 10 years. 10 whole years of medical gaslighting. Of painful procedures callously done to me on my internal reproductive organs without anaesthetic, without dignity, and often done with little communication from the medical professional doing the harm to me. I was at the point where I could finally get something I had been asking for, and I didn’t feel safe enough to go through with it. The consultant listed off all of the general risks of surgery, really stressing, “That I should I only go through with the surgery if I was willing to die in it”...
One thing I know for sure is that gynaecology isn’t a game I am willing to play anymore.
I would rather just deal with the pain.