Mukisa Jackie

From the age of fourteen, life became a cycle of pain. Every month meant bleeding that lasted for weeks, pain so severe it stole school days, sleep, and childhood joy. Like many young girls, she was told it was "normal." Painkillers became routine. Antibiotics were prescribed. Herbal remedies were tried. Nothing worked.

She moved from one gynaecologist to another. Diagnoses shifted between urinary tract infection and pelvic inflammatory disease. Pelvic scans showed cysts on both ovaries, but they were dismissed as "physiological." Endometriosis was never mentioned. Never taught. Never considered.

Determined to understand her own suffering, she trained as a nurse, believing medicine would finally give her answers. But even within hospitals and textbooks, endometriosis remained invisible. The pain worsened daily, relentless, all-consuming. Breathing became difficult. Bleeding stretched to three weeks at a time. Life shrank around survival.

In 2017, at the age of 27, her body collapsed. She blacked out and woke up bleeding in a doctor's office. An urgent scan finally revealed the truth: two massive ovarian masses, one of them ruptured. Surgery followed. Only then was the real diagnosis made — Stage IV Endometriosis.

Today, Jackie advocates for every woman who has been dismissed, misdiagnosed, and silenced. Her story is one of pain turned into purpose, and survival turned into service.