Roisin Howe, a 27-year-old woman from Kildare, describes the daily agony she endures from endometriosis due to the failings of the Irish health care system that forced her to seek a second opinion abroad.
This follows a motion that was put forward but rejected in the Dáil by Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald on Tuesday 15 July 2025 calling for adequate care for Irish women living with endometriosis.
Endometriosis is a serious, chronic inflammatory disease that affects the entire body, and it is characterised by severe pelvic pain, infertility, internal scarring (fibrosis), heavy and painful menstruation, and can cause irreversible damage to multiple organs.
At least one in ten women in Ireland are affected and Roisin Howe is just one woman who has come forward to share her battle with the disease after an MRI scan came up clear in Ireland but showed the opposite when she went abroad for a second opinion.
Roisin said that her journey got very dark at one point when she thought her only way out was suicide as Irish consultants told her there was nothing more they could do.
Roisin has made informative TikTok videos, was on Cork’s 98 FM and even wrote a letter to the Minister of Health this month to raise awareness and share her story.
Roisin has had no reply from the Minister nearly a month on although thousands of women have reached out to her via social media, all in similar circumstances.
“My story started when I was sixteen. I went to my GP with on going issues like passing blood clots the size of my hand, bleeding for 27 days,” Roisin began.
Roisin was left confused with no real help from her GP. She said the real flags came on in her early 20s when her pain started and she had really intense periods.
“I never knew about endometriosis up until about a year and a half ago,” Roisin explained.
She said that she finally got to see a gynecologist last October who made her aware of what endometriosis was because her pain was very extreme.
“Women in Ireland; we’re not very educated on our bodies and for my generation there was definitely a ‘put up and shut up’ attitude.”
Roisin suffers with constant aches and pains in her legs because her endometriosis has grown onto her pelvic nerves causing tingling and stabbing pains every day.
“It hurts to walk basically,” she revealed.
Roisin went through surgery after seeing her gynecologist but said her symptoms never went away afterwards.
Currently, her pain is back up to where it was and she suffers with a daily pain scale of around 7/10 because of her endometriosis.
“The consultant looked me in the eye and told me they had removed all of the endometriosis in my pelvis and that there is no way there is anymore endometriosis left.”
Roisin’s mental health suffered after this because she was still living with very bad daily pain with seemingly no way out. An MRI scan was done here in Ireland which showed the endometriosis was gone but Roisin decided to go to Bucharest in Romania to get a second opinion.
The scan abroad showed that Roisin’s pelvis was full of endometriosis and it was able to detect that she had a condition called adenomyosis where it had grown into her muscles in her pelvis.
The MRI also showed that Roisin had cysts and two large swollen nodes. Roisin now has to go for surgery to try and relieve some of the damage that has been done to her nerves. The surgery is also due to take place in Bucharest at the end of August.
Roisin has made multiple TikTok videos about her journey where hundreds and thousands of girls and women in Ireland have come forward to share their stories.
“Someone described it like they are banging their head against a wall and their head just got sorer because the wall won’t move, and that is the attitude that a woman with endometriosis can find with consultants in Ireland.
“I thought of taking my own life, the level of pain I am in is no joke. To have to fly to another country, paying out of my own pocket, to get the scan done and find out the endometriosis had grown back and was technically not removed from my first surgery; I was very angry. I was trying to trust in doctors here.
“I was devastated. This has stolen so much of my life from me and when I asked for help from the doctors here it was very much…we’ve done this so go about your day.”
Roisin said that she feels devastated for the women who aren’t financially able to fly to Bucharest.
She calls out to the government with a plea: “This isn’t about politics. Put your politics aside. This is about real stories, real women and real lives; women are suffering every single day. It shouldn’t even be a debate in 2025. Listen to women and our stories because we are the ones that live with the condition every single day.”
