In her poignant memoir, science writer Abby Norman delivers an eye-opening study of the medical profession's history of ignoring, dismissing, and misdiagnosing women's physical pain.

Pain: how long can you withstand it?

For women with endometriosis, a reproductive disease with no cure and to which little research has been dedicated, excruciating, constant pain can last for decades.

Being diagnosed can take years due to the medical community's historical lack of interest in women-specific diseases and conditions.

In Ask Me About My Uterus, science writer Abby Norman recounts in raw, rending honesty, her years-long personal struggle with medical institutions to get doctors to take her pain seriously and to give her a diagnosis.

After chronic pain caused her to leave college, Norman spent years educating herself and studying medical texts until she found a description of endometriosis. Only then did a doctor listen to her.

Norman's memoir ends this journey of discovery with the state of women's medicine and medical research into women's health problems to illuminate a pattern of doctors ignoring, misdiagnosing, and dismissing women's very real pain.