I have endometriosis and this movie just wasn't it. It clearly described the synptomes for these women and many are like them, but yet again women with endo like ne are overlooked again and again. Insure have typical symptoms and bad cramps and pain but my pain are not all the time and I have only 2 times gone to the hospital due to pain. I suffered in silence believing that I was just imagining how bad it was, I was too sensitive - the pain couldn't be so bad, because my sickness doesn't affect me AS MUCH as many with endo. I am able to work and study without affecting me too much. But still of course it affects me. They failed to educate what this really is, they failed to say that women could have this disease without little or any symptoms at all, they didn't mention the stages of endo, they didn't talk much about the surgery or the psychological affect the disease and the surgery could have. Some women could have stage 4 endo (severe) without any pain at all and there is me, diagnosed with stage 1 endo (minimal) and here I am in so much pain, but perhaps 1-3 days per month and sometimes I get pain free months. You never know how many days you will be in pain as the disease can suddenly change its behavior and I have felt that on my own skin. Going from having not so much pain and only a few hrs long extreme pain attack to more severe pain, for longer period of time and more of dull pain that is 3/10 and going on for many days. Sometimes my fiance can't move in the bed as it is so painful. So in conclusion, this movie didn't tackle the subject really well. Still I give it 6 as it maybe raises awareness of this extremely painful disease and women are hopefully more listened to, not just dismissed with something like "this is normal" or "this is only a bad ovulation pain". I can't remember how many times I've heard this from health care providers. And it was somwhere said (don't remember if it was in this movie) that this disease begins around that time when girls have their first period. That is false for me. I never missed school, I was very rately with that bad pain, I didn't throw up due to pain, I never lied in bed due to it... so making people believe that this is the only "face" of this disease is in bast case scenario a "above the iceberg" scratch. There are so many symptoms, so many "faces" of this disease. I also never bled that much during period and it never lasted more than 4-5 days but most commonly I was on my period for 2-3 days. So please educate people that that lying in bed in crushing pain is not what everyone feels even most at some point feels like that. I just felt that I wasn't "sick enough" because I don't fit that typical endo profile. My doctor even sent me to laparoscopic surgery mostly to exclude endo - to confirm I didn't have it because my synptoms don't fit the "normal" endo profile.
Review of Below the Belt
