For a comedian, hopping on stage and telling jokes to a roomful of people can be nerve-wrecking enough, which is why Amy Vreeke deserves a standing ovation for announcing, during a recent stand-up routine, that she suffers from endometriosis. "It was mainly, really cathartic," Amy told The Blossom about her 2016: The Year My Vagina Tried To Kill Me show from her home in Manchester, England. "After, like, years of kind of not knowing what was up and not talking about it to many people, it was very therapeutic to be able to talk about it and laugh about it with an audience."
Watch Amy joke about her endo here:
Amy, now 25, says she suffered from endo since the age of 12, and doctors didn't diagnose her until she turned 23. That experience, she says, provided more than enough material for her act. Privately, "I was making fun of the symptoms," she shares. "I just didn't know what it was for a long time. So, yeah, I'd be making jokes about it for longer than I even knew I was. I think that's really helped me to deal with it. I think if you can share a moment of laughter with somebody, when you're struggling with something like endometriosis, it can just really help ease the pressure."
Amy's routine was a such a viral hit that now she's thinking about taking her one-woman endo comedy show on the road.
"I think that I will keep telling jokes about it because it is such a big part of my life that it would feel strange not to talk about it. So, I think I'll definitely carry on, creating material surrounding endometriosis and other female-related things, and so my main name at the minute is just getting that up and running and touring so I can reach as many people as possible."
