BBC presenter Emma Barnett has opened up about her “horrific” experience with endometriosis – revealing that she can’t “remember a single thing” about a radio broadcast after being hit with intense pain.
The Today host, 41, revealed in 2024 that she had been diagnosed with endometriosis, a condition where cells that are similar to those in the lining of the womb grow in other parts of the body. It can cause severe period pains, heavy periods and in some cases, low moods, pelvic pain and fatigue.
Barnett has been vocal about the debilitating pain she suffers as a result of the condition, which caused her to blackout during an episode of Woman’s Hour from the agony.
“There was a 75th anniversary of Woman’s Hour,” she told Metro on Tuesday (2 June). “And my producer at the time looked at me just before we were about to go live.
“And I think she thought: ’Is she OK?’ I cannot remember a single thing about that programme. The pain was incredibly bad that day, but it was a great programme, I’m told.”
Describing the condition as “a thief” that sometimes “mugs you in broad daylight”, Barnett continued: “It might not be a life-threatening condition in the way that, for instance, we obviously have to see things like cancer, but it is a living death for many, many women, and it’s a slow one.”
The broadcaster, who hosted Woman’s Hour for three years before joining Today in March 2024, speaks about her endometriosis diagnosis and the extreme pain she suffers in a new BBC documentary, Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis.
“When you have a flare-up, it is like a tsunami through every cell of your body,” she says in the documentary. “You cannot move. You can’t do anything. The pain is total. It’s not in your pelvis, it’s not in your legs, it’s not in your arms. It’s everywhere.”
In the film, she interviews other women whose lives have been upended by the condition, with some choosing to undergo a hysterectomy – surgery to remove the womb – in order to mitigate the pain.
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At the end of the programme, Barnett reveals that she’s contemplating a hysterectomy, having admitted while in excruciating pain: “I just want my womb out. Something’s got to give.”
“Honestly, the pain that women like me live with, you get to a point where having yourself operated on for two, three, four, five hours, whatever it takes, you’ll go through it because what you’re living with is not life,” she says.
Emma Barnett: Fighting Endometriosis is available to stream on BBC iPlayer.
