Canadian women travel to Mexico for endometriosis surgery amid long waits at home

CALGARY — Some Canadian women suffering from endometriosis are paying tens of thousands of dollars for private surgery in Mexico, saying long wait times and diagnostic delays have left them with no other options.

Noelle Menu, a 37-year-old supply-chain systems adviser from Calgary, said she and her husband went into debt to spend about $35,000 on treatment at EndoGlobal in Tijuana, including airfare and a hotel stay.

"We can’t deal with it in Canada," Menu said.

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She said the debilitating pain began when she was 26, after she stopped taking birth control, and came to define her life through emergency room visits, a hysterectomy and waitlists stretching years.

At that point, it was literally destroying her life, she said, and to hear wait times of three to four years left her emotional and devastated.

A November 2025 report by the House of Commons health committee found Canada is doing a "poor" job providing care for endometriosis, a condition affecting one in 10 women where tissue similar to the uterine lining grows elsewhere in the body, causing severe pain.

The committee said it takes an average of five years to be diagnosed in Canada, with some waiting up to 20 years.

After diagnosis, it can take six to 18 months on average to see a specialist and up to 24 months for surgery, the report said.

The lost productivity due to the disorder costs the Canadian economy about $2.5 billion a year, according to the report.

Menu said she was forced to reduce her workday by half because of the pain.

"This disease is just debilitating for some women, and I really wish there was more awareness around it and that doctors would take us women seriously," she said.

Dr. Jorge Zavala, one of the founders of EndoGlobal, said a general lack of awareness among doctors contributes to long diagnostic delays.

"As a doctor, if you’re not trained in something, you’re not going to be able to diagnose it. It could be poking your eye, but if you are not trained to see it, you’re not going to see it," said Zavala.

Vanessa Papiernik, a 42-year-old veterinarian from Victoria, said it took about 30 years for her to get a diagnosis, which came with a cancer scare after a colonoscopy found a mass.

"I was purely in survival mode," said Papiernik, who endured nine months of debilitating pain.

She said she would take Advil, wear maternity clothes due to bloating and strap on a heating pad to go to work.

"I would push the pain aside, but as soon as I got home, I would realize, 'Wow, this is very dangerous, what I’m going through right now.'"

The biopsy showed it was endometriosis that had infiltrated her colon. Papiernik was referred to a centre in Vancouver but faced a one-year wait to see a specialist plus another year for surgery.

"Living like this for two years was just not an option for me," she said.

She booked a trip to the same Tijuana centre as Menu, and said there were more than 30 Canadian women receiving treatment there within the same timeframe.

Dr. Nicholas Leyland, president of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists of Canada, said the issue reflects discrimination.

"If this were happening with the same degree of pain in a male, it would have been fixed a long time ago," said Leyland.

He said there are not enough specially trained gynecologists in Canada to deal with the complex surgical issues, and that the condition requires a multidisciplinary approach.

The House of Commons report’s top recommendation called on Ottawa to "develop a national action plan on endometriosis" to deal with gaps in awareness, diagnosis and treatment.

The federal government responded that Statistics Canada is gathering data on conditions like endometriosis, with collection running until Jan. 15, 2027.

It also said the Canadian Institute of Health Research invested $4.9 million in endometriosis research between 2020 and 2025.

Shortly before her procedure, Menu said doctors in Mexico found a large mass that threatened to block her bowels and send her into septic shock, and she was two weeks away from emergency surgery.

With files from CBC News