On her worst days, 22-year-old Tara Smith feels so much pain in her pelvic region that a hot wheat bag, painkillers, and the comforts of her own bed, aren't enough. She needs to go to a hospital emergency department to get morphine.

"Some days it's like an intense period pain, but when it's bad, it's like someone's wrapped up all my abdominal organs in barbed wire and are pulling on it tightly," she said. "It's a very stabbing, horrible pain."

Tara Smith suffered in silence for three years before she was diagnosed with endometriosis. Credit:James Brickwood

Tara first felt the pain at puberty. But it took three more years of suffering, dozens of appointments with GPs and five gynaecologists, and a keyhole surgery, to be diagnosed with endometriosis.

Often dismissed as "bad period pain", endometriosis is a condition where tissue, similar to what normally lines the womb, grows outside the uterus, causing inflammation and debilitating pain.