Lena Dunham Opens Up About Living With a Painful Disease

Lena Dunham shared her recent health troubles in Thursday’s Women of the Hour podcast episode, in which she revealed she had been hospitalized for the fourth time.

The Girls star recorded herself from the Lennox Hill Emergency Room, saying she forced her podcast producer to accompany her to show everyone the effects of endometriosis.

“This is my fourth time in the last three-and-a-half months being in the Lennox Hill Emergency Room,” she says. “Third time for ovarian troubles: once was a broken radial head elbow fracture caused by tripping over a flip flop. But this is my fourth time and I spend a lot of time in this emergency room.”

The 30-year-old explained her recent trip to the emergency room, saying she thought what she had was a urinary tract infection that had been bothering her for about a week.

“I’ve been hurting more and more,” she explained. “I started antibiotics, didn’t do anything, and the pain in my back and my pelvis has become overwhelming and so I’m here to figure out if I have an ovarian cyst or some other kind of ovarian issue that’s causing the continuous pain that is draining me of my life force.”

When asked by her producer to guess what treatment she might receive at the emergency room, Dunham showed she’s been around the block a few times with a certain guess at what she could undergo.

“A vaginal ultrasound is what I’m going to get,” she said of her procedure. “If they’re feeling nice to me, they’ll help me a little with my pain.”

Dunham went into detail describing her experience with morphine, saying “It takes your pain and pushes it away from your body. The pain’s gone, and it’s not replaced with lack of pain, it’s replaced with lack of giving a s— about anything.”

She said after a week spent at the hospital, she experienced withdrawal symptoms: shaking, sweating and crying. “I felt like I’d done something terribly wrong just by wanting to feel better,” she said.

This is not the first time the actress has detailed her pain and health issues, showing her endometriosis scars in a bikini selfie Instagram post.

“As a public person I know I’m taking on a certain amount of hate and I armor myself (though that doesn’t mean I don’t go totally effing nuts when I see some of my heroes getting attacked online for things like their race or sexuality.)” she wrote. “But I can’t help but wonder how people without the same resources have learned to cope.”

This article originally appeared on People.com