Endometriosis, a painful and often overlooked disease, gets attention in a new film
Jenneh Rishe, a registered nurse, is not the type to let a health mystery go unsolved.
At age 30 and living in Los Angeles, she was determined to suss out the cause of the abdominal pain that sent her to the ER seven times in two years, as well as other symptoms like shortness of breath. She'd seen specialists including OB/GYNs pulmonologists and cardiologists. But the tests always came back normal.
"I thought maybe I'm dying or I have some kind of rare disease. But then I go online and find millions of women are going through exactly what I'm going through," Rishe explained.
She shared the story in the first few minutes of Below the Belt: The Last Health Taboo, a new documentary that follows four people on a years-long search for effective treatment for endometriosis.
This chronic inflammatory disease, which often causes severe pain during menstruation, is often poorly understood. People with endometriosis have tissue similar to that found in the uterine lining growing outside of the uterus, sometimes on the ovaries, fallopian tubes, bowel or other organs.
In addition to sometimes due to endometriosis symptoms.
