TORONTO - Katie Luciani spent years being told that her weeklong debilitating pain every month was a "normal" part of getting her period.

"My symptoms showed up when I was 11," said Luciani, who is now 38.

"I was in bed in the fetal position, cramping with a heating pad, throwing up all daylong, not able to go to school at all," she said.

Her family doctor at the time dismissed her symptoms. It wasn't until she was in her mid-20s that a physician at a walk-in clinic in Vancouver said she might have endometriosis, a chronic disease where the type of tissue that lines the uterus grows in other parts of the body.

One in 10 girls and women live with endometriosis — often called "endo" — in Canada, but there is an average delay of five years until it's diagnosed, according to the Canadian S

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