Rachael was also told she was imagining it. She had been trying to manage her severe pain and heavy periods with the pill for 10 years by the time she collapsed at a gig. The hospital sent her home with painkillers and a diagnosis of stress. The next time she collapsed the hospital put her in the gastroenterology ward. “Six nights I was there, on a drip. There was a woman dying of bowel cancer in the bed opposite me. It was horrible.” The doctors suspected kidney stones, so they ran multiple tests around her urinary system. They all came back negative. So did her blood tests. And the more tests that came back negative, the more Rachael sensed a shift in how she was being treated.