The singer Halsey has been incredibly open with fans about her endometriosis diagnosis and her struggles with the disorder.
She said during an appearance on the TV show “The Doctors” on Thursday that she’s going to freeze her eggs, because of the fertility problems that can accompany endometriosis.
“When I tell people that, they’re like, ‘You’re 23, why do you need to do that? Why do you need to freeze your eggs?’” she said, explaining: “Doing an ovarian reserve is important to me because I’m fortunate enough to have that as an option, but I need to be aggressive about protecting my fertility, about protecting myself.”
Endometriosis is a complex disorder in which uterine tissue grows outside the uterus, which can cause inflammation, cysts and scarring. In addition to fertility problems, it can lead to severe pain during menstruation and sex.
The “Bad At Love” singer said it was difficult to finally get a diagnosis explaining why she had been in so much pain. It typically takes women an average of seven years to put a name to the disease.
“The thing with endometriosis is that it comes down to that doctors can tend to minimize the female experience when it comes to dealing with it,” Halsey said. “My whole life, my mother had always told me, ‘Women in our family just have really bad periods.’ It was just something she thought she was cursed to deal with and I was cursed to deal with, and that was just a part of my life.”
Halsey first revealed her endometriosis battle in January 2016, telling fans who also are experiencing the condition that she knows “how excruciatingly painful it can be and how discouraging the disease can be.” She underwent surgery in 2017.
As she said on “The Doctors,” having a reproductive illness like endometriosis is sometimes “frustrating because it can really make you feel like less of a woman.”
“There’s a lot of times when you’re sitting at home and you just feel so terrible about yourself,” Halsey said. “You’re sick, you don’t feel sexy, you don’t feel proud, you don’t feel like there’s much hope.”
She added “that hopefully I can have a bright future and achieve the things that I want to achieve by doing the ovarian reserve.”