Bindi Irwin Details Decade of ‘Agonizing Pain’ Before Endometriosis Diagnosis

Bindi Irwin has been updating fans on her health, revealing how she spent over 10 years in “agonizing pain” before she was diagnosed with endometriosis in 2023.

Appearing on Monday’s (February 3) episode of the A Life of Greatness podcast with host Sarah Grynberg, Bindi revealed she’d been dealing with health issues for more than a decade, with most people in her life having no idea what she was going through.

“The only people that knew that I was incredibly unwell… my husband, my mom and my brother, and behind closed doors I was struggling to do anything and everything,” Bindi said, per People.

Bindi, 26, is the oldest child of the late conservationist and television personality Steve Irwin and his widow, Terri Irwin. Her brother is fellow conservationist and zookeeper Robert Irwin (21) and her husband is Chandler Powell (28), with whom she shares a daughter, Grace (3).

“It resulted in a lot of canceled plans, people must have thought I was just incredibly flaky because I was getting so sick from this disease that I would try to get up and I would just throw up,” she continued. “I was in so much pain all the time. Every day the fatigue and the battle.”

Bindi revealed her endometriosis diagnosis on Instagram in March 2023, but she says the condition is “an enormous problem” that isn’t “being talked about a lot.”

 

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“I went for 10 years undiagnosed because doctors really didn’t know enough, they diagnosed me with a million other things, like IBS, or hormones or ‘It’s just part of being a woman,'” she revealed. “The symptoms continued to snowball and it took me such a long time to find help and it’s a story that so many women and girls know all too well.”

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), “endometriosis is a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside the uterus. It can cause severe pain in the pelvis and make it harder to get pregnant [and] can start at a person’s first menstrual period and last until menopause.”

Bindi said she had numerous scans and tests and was told “there’s nothing wrong with you” despite “getting more and more unwell.”

Eventually, after a friend said Bindi’s symptoms matched her own, she visited a “lovely surgeon in the U.S.” who operated on her and “found voer 30 lesions.”

“Basically it attacks anywhere and everywhere … it affects everybody differently,” she stated. “It can affect women in many different ways from fertility issues to extreme pain and fatigue, heavy bleeding. For me, if I hadn’t gotten surgery, the next five years of my life would have been very make or break because I was having real problems internally.”

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She continued, “I had an enormous chocolate cyst that had adhered my ovary to my side so I was just in agonizing pain and it just doesn’t show up on scans for whatever reason.”

Bindi is now on the other side of surgery and “grateful,” adding that, while there’s no cure for endometriosis, “if you’re able to get surgery you have a better shot at life. Maybe in five of 10 years, I’ll have to get another surgery but for now, it’s all gone, which I’m very grateful for.”

She added, “I was so scared to share my story, I had never talked about being unwell, because I thought it was all in my head. After a dozen doctors tell you you’re crazy, you start to believe them.”

Bindi is known for starring with her family in the Animal Planet series Crikey! It’s the Irwins, which debuted in 2018. She also won Season 21 of Dancing With the Stars in 2015 and hosted the childrens’ nature series Bindi the Jungle Girl from 2007 to 2008.