There’s a particular kind of cruelty in being told your pain is normal. Not just once, but repeatedly. Over years. Over decades. Until you start believing that stabbing sensations in your lower abdomen are just something you’re supposed to endure. That’s the reality for millions of women dealing with endometriosis, a condition that affects roughly 1 in 10 women worldwide, yet remains frustratingly underdiagnosed.
Candice Guardino’s story is one of those narratives that hits differently once you understand what was actually happening behind the scenes. At 34, she was backstage at a sold-out comedy show, doubled over in pain, injecting herself with IVF hormones into a stomach already bruised from weeks of treatment. The audience was sipping drinks, laughing, completely unaware that the performer about to take the stage was quietly praying her body would cooperate enough for her to stand upright under the lights.
But this wasn’t about a bad day. This was the culmination of nearly two decades of being gaslit by the medical establishment.
When Pain Gets Dismissed as Just Part of Being a Woman
At 16, Guardino went to her doctor because her periods were so agonizing she sometimes couldn’t stand upright. The response was clinical, matter-of-fact: “It’s normal. Some women just have painful periods.” Birth control was prescribed. Her mother, wanting to help, agreed it was worth a try.
Seventeen years on birth control. That’s how long she stayed on it while her body screamed that something was profoundly wrong.
The symptoms multiplied. A swollen belly. Fibroids. Exhaustion that didn’t make sense. Brain fog that rolled in without warning. Low hormone levels that seemed contradictory given she was on hormonal contraception. Every doctor she saw offered variations of the same dismissal. They weren’t trying to be cruel. They were just uninformed. The entire system was uninformed.
This is what institutional neglect looks like. It doesn’t always come with malice. Sometimes it comes with a prescription pad and a shrug.
The Breaking Point That Led to Answers
The IVF cycle that night backstage didn’t work. No eggs grew. None were retrieved. That failure, devastating as it was, forced her to keep searching. A fertility specialist finally noticed something odd about her ovaries, particularly the right one. A referral to a surgeon in New York City followed.
The surgeon looked at her imaging and said something that actually stunned her: “You have a dermoid tumor engulfing your right ovary and extending upward toward your chest cavity.” He also suspected endometriosis, a word she’d never even heard before that moment.
Then came the question that felt almost absurd: “Are you in pain?”
Within 24 hours, she was in surgery. When she woke up, it felt like a brief nap. But the surgeon had spent more than 90 minutes removing a dermoid tumor, several fibroids, stage 3 endometriosis spread across her reproductive organs, and endometrial tissue coating parts of her bowels and even her appendix.
Suddenly, 17 years of confusion made sense. Every symptom. Every dismissal. Every heating pad in every dressing room. It all clicked into place.
The surgeon smiled and said something she’ll never forget: “Your eggs aren’t bad. They were just being suffocated. I saved your ovary. You’ll be pregnant one day.”
The Cost of Late Diagnosis
Her husband had been waiting in terror, imagining worst-case scenarios. The surgeon took time to explain everything to him. What was discovered. What was removed. What the future might hold.
But there was another reality waiting for them. These surgeries are often not fully covered by insurance. Medical bills drained their bank account faster than they could articulate the phrase: “Insurance doesn’t cover that.”
She was lucky, though. Not because the medical system worked well. But because she finally had an answer.
The Real Cost of Silence
What’s infuriating about endometriosis isn’t just the condition itself. It’s the culture of silence around it. Women smile through meetings. They power through presentations. They perform comedy onstage while pain radiates through their bodies. The world doesn’t see the heating pad, the injections, or the quiet tears in bathroom stalls.
Studies on women’s health disparities show this pattern repeating endlessly. Women are more likely to have their pain attributed to psychological causes. Women are more likely to be prescribed sedatives instead of proper diagnostics. Women are more likely to wait significantly longer for a diagnosis than men presenting with similar symptoms.
Guardino’s path from teenager with “normal period pain” to woman in urgent need of major surgery wasn’t an anomaly. It’s the default experience for millions of women seeking answers within a system that simply wasn’t built to listen to them.
Years Later, Still Fighting
Today, she still lives with endometriosis. She’s still in pain sometimes. As she writes, she’s wearing a heating pad. But now she knows what’s happening. She knows how to manage it through diet, stress management, and working with doctors who actually understand the disease.
She eventually heard the sound she’d prayed for: her baby’s first cry. Every surgery, injection, bruise, and backstage breakdown suddenly made sense. Not because suffering is noble or character-building, but because it finally led somewhere.
The deeper issue here is that thousands of women are still where she was at 16. Still being told their pain is normal. Still being prescribed band-aid solutions instead of proper investigation. Still waiting for someone to actually listen.
Her message to those women is clear: Keep asking questions. Keep advocating for yourself. Keep searching for answers. And most importantly, you’re not alone.
Because somewhere, another woman is being dismissed in a doctor’s office right now, and the only difference between her diagnosis and Guardino’s is how many years she’ll have to wait before someone takes her seriously.
