They got engaged on a Sydney beach in December and spent Valentine’s Day in a plush Darling Harbour hotel, but as former Home and Away stars and real-life lovers Sophie Dillman and Patrick O’Connor prepare for their next chapter in a new home, there’s a struggle one of them wants to talk about.
Sophie – who has previously gone public with an “exhausting and painful” journey with endometriosis, a condition in which tissue that’s similar to the lining of the uterus grows outside of it – said the couple’s recent house move had led her symptoms to explode.
“My weekend’s been really, really full on. We’ve moved house, so because of that my symptoms are flaring really badly from all of the exertion that I’ve put on my body,” Sophie shared in a video on Instagram, adding that she’d not been able to “eat properly” amid the move.
Explaining that she was feeling “really fatigued” in the middle of the morning, Sophie said she needed a hot bath with magnesium “to help with swelling and pain”.
“Some days I look like I’m about to birth twins which is really fun when you’re getting dressed or when you have an event on, where you have to wear something tight or a bikini,” the star explained in another online video in support of Endometriosis Awareness Month.
She divulged more about how endo was still impacting her physically in a new interview with Refinery 29.
“It’s a nightmare, because people literally ask me if I’m pregnant. And it’s a fine line because I want to be really open about the disease and I want to bring awareness to it, but also it does make you feel s**t when people are constantly criticising or making comments about what you look like,” Sophie said.
The star is adamant that if endo affected men “it would be cured by now”.
“Women have had to suffer in silence for so long, you know,” she told Refinery 29. “It’s just expected that women are in pain all the time.”
One person who has consistently supported Sophie through her endo journey is her now-fiance Patrick who proposed to her with a heartfelt speech at Queens Beach in Sydney’s Vaucluse in December after five years of dating (a year of which was long-distance).
He had been inspired to pick that particular place to propose as one of his favourite photos of Sophie was of her standing in that spot as the sun set behind the harbour bridge.
“We’re both 33 so she knew it was coming around the corner, but the place that I picked just meant a lot to us,” Patrick told Stellar in a new interview.
“And the last few years of living overseas and then sort of doing long distance for a year, it felt like the time was right.”
