16/09/2025
Everybody experiences back pain at some point or other, so when Maggie Noone felt a twinge in her back and her right side while out walking with a friend on holiday in March 2023, she put it down to her Birkenstock sandals being an unsuitable choice of footwear.
But once back home in Ireland, the pain didn’t subside and at times got worse, going from the lower back into the pelvis. Despite being in her mid-50s at the time, she was still menstruating, so when she also began to experience stomach bloating, she thought that the two symptoms were the start of menopause.
These were coupled with extreme tiredness and a lack of appetite, both of which she put down to getting older, but when she started to experience constipation, she began to think something else might be the cause.
“I was looking at all of the symptoms in isolation and when I went to see my doctor, I only mentioned one thing at a time,” she says.
Read the full story on the Irish Independent
