Why Bindi Irwin Has Been So Honest About Her Endometriosis Journey

Yahoo

a day ago

Originally appeared on E! Online
Bindi Irwin named her daughter Grace Warrior, knowing from personal experience that some of life's challenges may require every last ounce of fighting spirit to overcome.
The Australian conservationist, who shares the 4-year-old with husband Chandler Powell, suffered in silence for more than a decade before undergoing surgery in 2023 to treat endometriosis, a condition in which uterine lining tissue grows outside of the uterus.
"Doctor after doctor would say, 'Hey, it's just part of being a woman, there's really nothing wrong with you,'" Bindi recalled on a February episode of the A Life of Greatness With Sarah Grynberg podcast. "I was just getting more and more unwell, and it affects so many different parts of your life."
She was still nervous about sharing such a personal story with millions of people. But once Bindi, who's celebrating her 27th birthday July 24, detailed her experience, the daughter of late Crocodile Hunter star Steve Irwin didn't regret it.
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"All I want is to help other people that are in the same position,' Bindi told E! News in May. 'Women have to choose their support system—whether it's your family or your chosen family, your friends—you have to find people that are going to keep lifting you up, because it's a very lonely disease as well."
Only her mom Terri Irwin, brother Robert Irwin and her husband knew what she had been going through before she broke her silence in March 2023.
And no one guessed that the perpetually beaming Bindi—who even as a child conducted herself with utmost poise after losing her dad—had been hurting so badly.
"You can show up and have a big rain cloud sitting over you," she told Sarah Grynberg. "That's not a great way to live. You can choose to show up for yourself and for everybody else in a more positive way."
Yet her self-described "glass-half-full" approach only went so far when crippling physical pain was involved.
"Behind closed doors," she continued, "I was struggling to do anything and everything. It resulted in a lot of canceled plans. I think people must have thought I was incredibly flaky."
When she finally underwent surgery in the U.S. two years ago, her medical team found 37 lesions and an ovarian cyst filled with old menstrual blood.
"If I hadn't gotten surgery," Bindi said, "the next five years of my life would have been very make-or-break, because I was having real problems internally."
But though she certainly felt validated after years of life-interrupting fatigue, nausea and pain, her journey wasn't over, endometriosis having no cure.
In May, hours after calling her condition a "lonely disease," in fact, Bindi underwent emergency surgery to have her appendix removed, and doctors found another 14 lesions, as well as repaired a hernia that stemmed from Grace's birth in 2021.
Which made Bindi more determined than ever to keep it real in hopes that grinning and bearing it will become a thing of the past.
"The reason I share my health journey is because more girls and women desperately need answers to their undiagnosed pain," she wrote on Instagram two weeks after the procedures. "This disease is crippling and can make you feel incredibly isolated."
"We need to raise awareness and change the narrative for women's health," she continued. "I see you, your pain is real, and you deserve answers and genuine health care."
Whatever the cause, Bindi throws herself into it, her boundless enthusiasm reminiscent of her dad, who died in 2006 when she was only 8.
"He was always on the go, he never stopped," Bindi told Los Angeles' KTLA of her father in 2016. "I think I inherited his lack of patience, because if he had something on his mind he just had to do it right now."
But it wasn't until her daughter was born that Bindi really went to bat for herself and called B.S. on the whole "this is all just part of being a woman" explanation for her pain.
"I went, 'I have to do something,'" she recalled on A Life of Greatness. "This can't just all be in my head."
Not to mention, she needed every drop of energy possible to care for the most important two-legged creature in her life.
"Once you have a child," she explained, "your whole existence becomes trying to care for them. When I was so sick, it was hard to do. So then I found help and I'm so grateful to be on the other side of surgery."
See what other celebrities have had to say about their health challenges:
Lupita Nyong'o's Uterine FibroidsSuki Waterhouse's HerniaBrian Austin Green's Perforated AppendixAdam Devine's Long-Term Injury From Childhood AccidentJason Tartick's Back InjuryMatt Kirschenheiter's Heart AttackTracy Morgan's Medical EmergencyChristy Carlson Romano's Eye InjuryAmy Schumer's Cushing SyndromeCasey Fitzgerald's Neck Injury From Hockey Skate BladeHailey Bieber's Blood ClotJustin Bieber's Ramsay Hunt SyndromeJamie Foxx's Brain Bleed & StrokeEmilia Clarke's Brain AneurysmCori Broadus's StrokeShailene Woodley's Health Battle
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