Endo Days
By Libby Trainor Parker
Endo Days tells the story of Adelaide woman Libby Trainor Parker who wasn’t diagnosed with endometriosis until she was 36 years old, which was two decades after presenting with symptoms. A comedian, performer, writer, and teacher, Libby has spent her years since diagnosis informing, educating, advocating, and entertaining about endometriosis. Endo Days is a funny, frank, warm account of Libby’s life with the chronic, incurable illness, alongside stories from patients and their supporters, doctors, advocates, and other voices from all across Australia. Libby regales the sometimes funny and sometimes infuriating tales of her battle to get past medical gaslighting to be diagnosed, her successful plight to get education for the condition into schools, and her struggles with fertility and eventual acceptance that she’ll never have a baby of her own.
This book is for people who have been living with the illness a long time or newly diagnosed. It’s for patients, partners, parents or anyone with a particular interest in pelvic pain and matters of the uterus. Libby chats with people of diverse backgrounds, cultures, genders and values to get an idea of the impact of this illness that affects one in nine people who menstruate.
Featuring endo tips, tricks, tales and titillation, Endo Days is chronically fun, incurably candid and fully sick.
Endorsements
"So often those with endometriosis are ignored, dismissed, misdiagnosed and gaslit by the medical profession.
Libby’s unique and hilarious humour, combined with journalistic rigour and addictive, rollicking storytelling, forces us to sit up and pay attention to a condition that affects 1 in 9 Aussie people who menstruate.
Like an expert markswoman, she shoots down the endo myths one at a time offering sufferers beacons of hope - and perhaps more importantly, the sense of being heard and believed. She offers patients compassion, open-heartedness and a long-sought sense of community.
Not only this, but Libby lays down a rally cry to the medical community: believe us and do better.
For anyone with endo - or anyone who loves someone with the condition - this book is an hilarious and educative must-read."
Ginger Gorman
Author of Troll Hunting: Inside the world of online hate and its human fallout
"With vulnerability, humour and kindness Libby Trainor Parker has put into words everything I wish I had known at the start of my own experience with endometriosis.
By mixing memoir with journalism, ENDO DAYS presents information, stories and tools that will save so many from pain, humiliation and dismissal.
This is an important practical resource that will ensure future generations are able to understand their bodies, self-advocate and live fulfilling lives alongside their endometriosis."
Kylie Maslen
Author of Show Me Where It Hurts: Living with Invisible Illness
