Bachelor Contestant Lexi Young’s health unfortunately took her out of the running for Joey Graziadei’s heart during the 28th season of the reality dating show. But she says she found love in other ways from that experience.
The 30-year-old recently opened up to PEOPLE about living with endometriosis — a condition in which uterine tissue grows outside the uterus, causing cramping and chronic pain — and how it affected her participation on the show.
Young, a digital strategist from Atlanta, Georgia, says that while it wasn’t shown on TV, she ended up in the emergency room during filming in Los Angeles due to pain.
“I actually ended up at UCLA Hospital while I was on the show,” Young tells PEOPLE. “The cyst on my ovary burst because I froze my eggs two weeks before going on the show. And so my ovaries got so big from all the hormones that they haven’t come back yet.”
Praising the show’s producers for taking such good care of her, Young admits that it was still “difficult” to deal with her endometriosis in that environment while also traveling overseas frequently for the show.
“I wanted to keep it private, but I think it just shows that the ride wasn’t perfect. I was dealing with it all the time,” she says. “I’m just very stubborn and I stuck through it.”
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Lexi Young and Joey Graziadei on The Bachelor.
Disney/John Fleenor
Bachelor Contestant Lexi Young Talks About Endometriosis Diagnosis: ‘My Pain Is Confirmed’
But Young’s endometriosis actually resulted in her elimination from the dating show.
During week four, the reality star shared her endometriosis with Graziadei for the first time during their one-on-one date in Malta. However, she later made the decision to leave the show during week 6 after learning that Graziadei wanted two to three years of engagement and several years of marriage before starting a family.
Young told him that because her endometriosis put her at increased risk of infertility, she didn’t have the “privilege” of waiting to have children, but she didn’t want to stop him from sticking to his schedule.
“I feel like I made the right choice… for both Joey and myself. We’re on different timelines and that’s okay. Therefore, I give up my decision”, she explains. “I think I could have stayed and that wouldn’t have been fair to Joey. We would go into marriage with different expectations of what that looks like.”
For Young, dealing with her journey with endometriosis has been a work in progress, particularly learning to accept how the condition can cause infertility. She says her journey actually began in eighth grade when she started experiencing painful periods. “I would be in the bathtub crying, bent over in pain,” she recalls, noting that doctors simply put her on birth control at a young age to “mask” the symptoms.
Bindi Irwin, Olivia Culpo and Chrissy Teigen suffer from endometriosis — an expert explains the condition
“There’s a difference between a painful period and not being able to function,” she continues. “As I went through high school and college, I got worse and worse, but the doctors told me everything was fine.”
Young says at one point she even had to “go to the emergency room because I was losing so much blood.” However, her pain was still often dismissed or misdiagnosed.
Only in 2019, after she moved from San Francisco to New York, did she find a doctor who finally diagnosed her with laparoscopic surgery. Young was told she had stage 4 endometriosis all over her abdomen, and that it had spread to her lungs.
“I will remember that day for the rest of my life,” she says. “I walked into the hospital and it was like 50% ‘It’s finally the answer to my pain’ and then 50% ‘I don’t want to have this terminal condition.'”
“I felt validated for the first time in over a decade,” she adds. “I felt like I had a doctor who was listening to me and that my pain was real. I just remember being so emotional that I burst into tears.”
But with that excitement and relief came fear as Young admits she didn’t know what the diagnosis meant for her life at such a young age. She initially felt “very isolated and lonely” after receiving her diagnosis because she didn’t know much about the condition or who she could rely on. “I felt like a life prisoner in a way,” she admits.
Young has since started physical therapy and connected with a community of women in New York who also have endometriosis, which has allowed her to find ways to manage her symptoms and feel less alone.
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However, she continues to experience bouts of “endo belly” symptoms up to four times a week, where her stomach becomes severely bloated. “My stomach is swollen and it feels like my ovaries are covered with barbed wire. It’s just so painful.”
Doctors tell Young she will likely need a second operation, but recommend she wait until she’s close to being ready to conceive a child to avoid further scarring. But as a single woman, Young says she has no plans to start a family anytime soon, so she’s “just in the waiting game.”
“I manage the pain with hormone therapy and physical therapy. I pay attention to my diet, but that’s what I deal with every day,” he adds.
As she continues to learn how to deal with her endometriosis, Young tells PEOPLE she’s grateful to have had the opportunity to share her story on TV, hoping to raise awareness and let other women with the condition know they’re not alone.
“I was so nervous. It’s a tough subject to bring up, and it’s so hyper personal to me,” explains Young. “I just wanted to make sure that I talked about it in the right way and I wanted to make sure that I told my story in a way that I would be proud of. And I feel like I am.”
Along with Young, Chrissy Teigen, Olivia Culpo, Bindi Irwin, Amy Schumer and Julianne Hough are also among the 6.5 million women in the US who are affected by the disease.
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Source: HIS Education