When Mel Calandruccio was in high school, girls were told severe period pain was just a part of growing up.
“There was this expectation that you would just suffer in silence,” said Calandruccio, now a senior school teacher at Queenwood in Mosman. “My mum said she used to faint from her period pain in class and teachers wouldn’t bat an eye, I think just because women are expected to grin and bear it and deal with so much pain without complaining.”
Queenwood year 9 students Evie Davis, Sonia Punter and Chloe Abbott are among 100,000 students who have benefited from pelvic pain and endometriosis instruction.Credit: Max Mason-Hubers
But after a one-hour “PPEP talk” (covering periods, pain and endometriosis) with pelvic health physiotherapist Polly Levinson, Calandruccio’s year 9 students are better able to recognise when something isn’t right and they need to seek help.
“I found it really helpful learning … what pain is OK to have and what pain’s not OK to have, and when you should talk to a doctor,” said student Evie Davis. “If you feel like something’s not right, you may as well ask.”
Independent and Catholic schools receive federal funding for these sessions, but NSW is the only state in Australia that doesn’t fund the program in public schools.
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Upper house MP Emma Hurst will on Wednesday move a motion in state parliament calling on the Minns government to fund 125 PPEP talk sessions across 90 public schools. It would cost a “modest” $200,000 a year, Hurst said.
Hurst, who has both stage 3 endometriosis and adenomyosis, recalls being in so much pain as a teenager that she would pull the buttons off her school uniform, only to go to the school’s sick bay and be met with eye rolls when she said she had period pain.
“There’s just a total lack of information about what endometriosis is,” Hurst said.
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