'I Went To A&E Four Times In Such Agony I Thought My Appendix Would Burst. Here’s How A Robot Saved Me.'

She had suffered from chronic constipation ever since she was little, but as she reached her teens she struggled with extreme stomach pains.

“The pain would come in waves before I needed to use the toilet. And when I did it was severe cramping where I would struggle to stand up straight to walk to the loo. It was agonising,” the 22-year-old from Guernsey says.

“I was often told off by teachers for not using the toilet in break despite it being completely out of my control, which was embarrassing in front of my classmates.”

The problem dogged her every day and she tried various medications and treatments to ease the symptoms, none of which worked.

By the time she was 16 and studying for her A Levels, her periods got progressively heavier and the bowel cramps got stronger.

“I would have to use a pad and a tampon at the same time and even despite this I was changing my tampons every hour or so. It was miserable. All my friends were leading a normal life around me, but there were days when I couldn’t go out because of the pain. I felt like I was missing out on my teens.”

While she was sitting her physics GCSE, she had to leave the exam hall due to the unbearable pain and call her mum, who took her to hospital with suspected appendicitis.

Scans showed there was “nothing wrong” and she was sent home with paracetamol.

After four A&E visits - each time with pain so bad she feared her appendix would burst - her doctor dad suggested she may be suffering from endometriosis.

Her GP referred her to a specialist who carried out a diagnostic laparoscopy and, by the time she was 17, she had a diagnosis of endometriosis, a condition in which tissue that is similar to the inner lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus

“He found lesions from my bowel to my uterus and endometriosis in other areas too. During that surgery I had the Mirena Coil placed which meant I no longer bled from periods. I was so happy to find relief at last”, she says.

Maxime was pain-free for a year, but when she moved to university in London to study Ceramic Design at Central Saint Martins the symptoms re-emerged in a new way.

“I started getting a lot of pain when I went for a wee and cramps before and after passing urine, which made lectures really difficult. I suffered from belly bloating on most days which left me looking unrecognisable.

“I couldn’t fit into my jeans and there were days when sitting down in anything fitted would aggrieve the pain.”

Her tutors were understanding and marked her work accordingly, but once again Maxime felt as if life was passing her by.

Endometriosis specialists were reluctant to operate and wanted to continue hormonal treatment as they couldn’t see anything abnormal on her scans that they could remove.

Despite the pain and upheaval, Maxime graduated when she was 21, but she struggled to find work that she could manage alongside the condition.

She enjoyed working as a receptionist in a 5-star hotel and quickly made friends, but standing up all day aggravated the pain and she struggled to cope. Brokenhearted, she left the job after a few months.

“My confidence had been knocked badly from being in pain a lot of the time, I struggled to hold conversations with colleagues and customers,” she says.

“I was so disappointed to have to leave. From then I have worked part time as a barista in a café which has suited me well but was not an income I can live off. There were days where I could not go in due to my pain and by this point my urine and bowel problems had gotten so bad that I could no longer control when I needed to go.

“I would have to run to the toilet in the middle of serving customers which was such an embarrassing experience. Most days felt like a humiliation ritual because I would eat knowing I would be in pain soon after so I would just have to pray that no one would be around when it happened.”

However, Maxime’s fortunes were transformed when she found endometriosis specialist Mr Amer Raza at Cromwell Hospital, who insisted she have another laparoscopy.

He then performed the UK’s first robotic-assisted endometriosis surgery on the da Vinci single port system.

The surgery, which took place in April, excised all endometriosis that was found including the lesions on her bowel and endometriosis found growing on her fallopian tube.

The da Vinci SP system is a platform for robotic-assisted surgery designed to enable surgeons to perform procedures through a single incision or natural orifice, which has seen huge benefits for patients including less pain, faster recovery times, less blood loss and reduced chances of scarring and tissue loss.

The surgery was transformational. While she still experiences occasional bowel pain, she feels so much better.

“It can be exacerbated when I eat certain foods so I know it will be trial and error but the difference in my pain is huge,” she says.

“Endometriosis has taken so much of my childhood and it has stolen my dream of becoming an artist. I am unable to do strenuous exercise and I have missed out on so much. But I am grateful for this surgery and can only hope that it will continue to help me for a long time as endometriosis is a progressive disease.

“It is so important that people realise that endometriosis symptoms differ from person to person. The stage of endometriosis does not equate to how much pain an individual will be in. It depends on where the lesions are growing.

“It is a common misconception that this will only affect people one week of a month which is completely incorrect. When I was first diagnosed, I was stage 1, but my pain was daily due to the tissue growing on my bowel. It is not just a period disease; it is full-body inflammation. And the more people know about it, the more people like me can get help to recover sooner.”