Charlotte Henshaw: Paralympic champion on the challenges of being an athlete with endometriosis

The life of an athlete is highly structured: a series of careful plans, built around training, nutrition, and recovery with a set goal in mind.

Paracanoeist Charlotte Henshaw, interested in getting some extra help with training, decided to attend a talk on menstrual health. She had switched sports to swimming in 2017, but she had already been dealing with pain and fatigue for some time, having withdrawn from a Scottish swimming championship some years earlier with pain that prevented her from getting up from the pool. bed.

She had gone to a doctor, who diagnosed her with irritable bowel syndrome, but the symptoms still appeared.

“I couldn’t find a place that was comfortable, I had nausea and burning pains during my period,” Henshaw tells BBC Sport.

“On a bad day, it was so debilitating that I couldn’t do anything. On a good day, it was manageable.”

In the talk, Henshaw was encouraged to keep track of her menstrual cycle.

“At this point, I started noticing this pain coming at the same point every month during ovulation,” she says.

“Suddenly, I had this journal of information where I could go back to a doctor and say ‘this has to do with my menstrual cycle, let’s explore that.'”

Despite all this, it took Henshaw another five years to be diagnosed with endometriosis. One condition where cells like those of the lining of the uterus grow in other parts of the body. It is a long-term condition with no cure, with symptoms ranging from severe pain to heavy bleeding.

Endometriosis UK claims that one in 10 women will suffer with the condition, but it can take an average of eight years to get a diagnosis. Delays in getting a diagnosis can be just as upsetting as the symptoms themselves, and many women find that uncertainty about what’s wrong can affect their mental health.

Henshaw submitted a laparoscopy in December 2020 to confirm the diagnosis and has been on the pill ever since, which has helped her control her cycle and her pain. However, there are a lot of what she calls “weird and wonderful things” that still have an impact on her every month.

“[I can get] painful bowel movements and pain [hip] rotation, which, in a sport like canoeing, is what I do hundreds of times a day,” he says.

“It was part of the reason why we desperately needed a plan, especially before the Tokyo Games. [in 2021].”

When Henshaw woke up from his procedure, the first thing he asked his recovery nurse was “did you find anything?” When the nurse said yes, Henshaw said she was “completely relieved” not only because it was an answer to her long-running question, but also because “people wouldn’t think I was making this up.”

As Henshaw acknowledges, planning is the tricky part for athletes who like to be in control of their immediate environment. Henshaw can’t predict when a flare will occur or how severe the pain will be—”one day you feel great and the next day you really can’t get out of bed”—but she wants to be as prepared as possible.

With a double-leg amputation, Henshaw won KL2 gold at the delayed Paralympics in 2021, having previously won SB6 100m breaststroke silver and bronze at the 2012 and 2016 Games, respectively. She knows what it takes to compete and win at the highest level, especially in canoeing where her British teammates are often her direct competitors.

“I’ve learned that just because you’re here and physically present at training doesn’t mean it’s an effective training day,” she says.

“Thoughts cross your mind of ‘I wonder what so-and-so is doing today and I’m sitting on the bed unable to move,’ but it still wouldn’t have been an effective training day.

“Is it better to take that time to recover and get your body to the best of its ability and not force him to train that day? I think it’s a learning curve.”

An athlete’s body is his livelihood. It is the key to earning medals; it may be the decisive factor in obtaining or not obtaining funding for the next Paralympic cycle. Henshaw says she struggles with health anxiety and remembers the period of time when she was in pain and no test could produce an answer as difficult for her.

She credits social media for helping her understand her endometriosis, exchanging messages with other Instagram users to hear about their experiences and how they managed the symptoms. Henshaw found that warm compresses, acupuncture, pain relievers and rest from her help: “Some days it doesn’t work, other days it’s fine.”

Her goal is to compete in her fourth Paralympics in Paris next year, and she says: “If I wake up on the last day of the Paralympics and I have a horrible outbreak, we have to know how to deal with it.” “

Henshaw also says that growing up with a disability helped her develop a different perspective on what people are going through. She was born with bilateral tibial hypoplasia, meaning her legs were underdeveloped and were subsequently amputated above the knee when she was 18 months old.

“What people are going through isn’t always as obvious as a pair of legs stretched out on the edge of a pool or lake,” he adds.

“I don’t think there’s any particular understanding, especially with something like endometriosis, which is universally regarded as painful periods.

“It’s not that, and I think the more people understand that, the more empathetic they can be.”