A young woman says her life has changed after surgery to treat stage 4 endometriosis.

From her first period at 13, Te Kura Parsons-Grace knew something wasn’t right: she could be “crying” in pain so bad it would cause her to faint.

But for years she says it was regarded as normal. It was “a bit of a mind game — you start to think you’re crazy”, the aspiring primary school teacher said.

So she pushed through. Until one day, curled over in pain at work thinking her appendix may have burst, she says she went to an emergency department.

A diagnostic laparoscopy discovered it wasn’t in the now 26-year-old’s head at all: she had severe stage 4 endometriosis.

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