‘I endured debilitating pain sat on a gynaecology waiting list for years’

A woman has told of the excruciating and debilitating pain she endured while stuck on a gynaecology waiting list for three and a half years as she urged the government to slash waiting times.

Michelle Heffer told The Independent she first started seeing her GP for very heavy periods as a teenager before being diagnosed with two cysts on her ovaries caused by endometriosis after having her first ultrasound in 2020.

Ms Heffer, an actor who lives in Essex, said the pain she was experiencing forced her to stop working her side job as a teaching assistant as well as turning down TV work.

“Sometimes it was a really sharp stabbing pain,” she added. “I used to say to friends ‘I just want to rip my insides out’.”

Her comments come as a new report, by the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG), has found gynaecology waiting lists in England have grown more quickly than any other elective specialty and are now over twice the size they were before the Covid crisis.

The research discovered three quarters of a million women in the UK are currently waiting for gynaecology hospital care – with more patients referred than are seen and treated every month meaning that the list is growing.

“While I was waiting, it just dominated my life for those three and a half years, because I was in pain so often,” Ms Heffer said. “It was not just during my periods that I was in pain.”

Ms Heffer explained she was forced to wait over a year for surgery which involved a doctor removing cysts and gauging the extent of her endometriosis.

But after her first surgery, she found her bowel symptoms began to deteriorate very rapidly and was forced to wait another 18 months for joint surgery with a Gynaecologist and bowel surgeon, she added.

She explained it emerged her endometriosis had gone from stage 3 to stage 4 during the surgery.

“It was so bad,” Ms Heffer said of the pain. “You can’t really do anything. It made me feel like I was going to faint. I would push through and leave the house but then you feel really vulnerable because you are in so much pain.”

Ms Heffer said she thinks gynaecology has such long waiting lists because it is not considered a priority within hospitals and gets pushed to the bottom of the list.

“In some ways, the waiting is the worst part because nothing has been communicated to you so you feel like your life is on hold just waiting,” she added.

Endometriosis is a very common chronic inflammatory condition, impacting an estimated 1.5 million women in the UK.

“I’ve had my surgery so now I’m doing really well,” Ms Heffer said. “I haven’t taken a single painkiller for two months. My last two periods have been completely pain-free after 12 years of them being unmanageable in terms of pain.”

The new study found almost half of women in England are being forced to wait longer than the NHS target of 18 weeks and roughly five per cent - nearly 30,000 - for over a year, despite suffering symptoms like chronic pain, heavy periods, and incontinence.

Researchers warn this is leading to growing numbers of women on waiting lists being forced to go to A&E due to their gynaecology conditions deteriorating as they wait.

Dr Ranee Thakar, president of RCOG, said: “The women I see in my clinic are grappling with serious conditions like prolapse and incontinence.

“This has a devastating effect on their mental health, family life, and ability to work or even leave their house. Gynaecology and urogynaecology teams are doing their best but are simply unable to provide timely care.”

She argued that if the new government is keen to achieve their election promises of prioritising women’s health and curbing waiting lists, then addressing gynaecology waits “must be top of their list”.

Jane Plumb, who also works for RCOG, said: “Shockingly, over three-quarters of a million women and people in England are being left to grapple with serious, often progressive, gynaecological conditions, enduring months - sometimes years - of suffering.

“We’ve heard from thousands of women and people about this – the impact reaches every part of their lives. Some have even been forced to give up work due to the severity of their symptoms. Even worse, those in more deprived areas face the longest wait times, piling inequality upon inequality. It’s time to act on this urgent issue.”

A spokesperson for the Department of Health and Social Care said: “It is unacceptable that so many women are not receiving the gynaecology care they need, when they need it.

“This government is determined to change that and is committed to prioritising women’s health. We have launched an investigation into the NHS, led by Professor Lord Darzi, to uncover the extent of the issues facing the nation’s health service, the first step on the road to recovery for the NHS.”