As a teenager in Kenya, long before Evelyn Okinyi Owala became a professional bodybuilder, she attended school, spent time with friends and helped her parents around the house. But during her period each month, she said, she experienced excruciating pain, vomiting, fever, lightheadedness, heavy bleeding, pelvic pain and acne.
Over time, Owala said, the pain was so severe that she struggled to breathe and passed out. She endured the pain without seeking medical help because she thought it was normal, and said it grew worse in her 20s. After years of suffering, at the age of 30, Owala finally went to see a gynecologist.
“I was told I have cysts,” she explained to CNN’s Larry Madowo in Nairobi in May. “And I went in for surgery. The problem is one month later, before I healed from the stitches, I had a reoccurrence of the cyst.”
Owala said she was told that she needed another surgery, but her recovery and insufficient insurance coverage made that difficult. While considering her options, she began researching alternative treatments, particularly after meeting a woman who told Owala that she’d undergone 13 operations.
Owala said she came to believe that surgery had treated a symptom, but not “the root cause” of her condition, which she said was a hormonal imbalance.
