Ellen got her period at age eleven, and, after a few years, the mild cramps she’d experienced at first began to morph into a different beast entirely. “The pain was shifting from my uterus to my hips, and it got worse and worse and worse. And it was a different kind of pain than I was used to. It felt like a burning, inflammatory pain, like if you had a hot coffee mug and pushed it against your joints.” Her back was painful and stiff, all the way up to her neck. “The result was that a lot of times I couldn’t really walk or stand or sit. It put too much pressure on that part of my body. I could basically only move back and forth in bed every so often to distribute the pain around.”