Support for New Zealand nurses on their strike is coming from the most unlikely places - even from a woman who's in excruciating pain from suspected endometriosis and has had her surgery postponed.
Eighteen-year-old Liv Redman never quite knows when her crippling cramps will strike.
"It just feels like a squeezy, pressury, sharp pain," she told Newshub. "I'll bend over, take a few deep breaths and just hope for the best."
For three years, doctors told Ms Redman her symptoms were normal, but recently everything changed.
"Over Christmas this year, I was travelling and I started bleeding for 40 days straight - then I realised there was something wrong there."
She was due to have a laproscopic investigation at North Shore Hospital on Thursday. It might have finally been able to give her a diagnosis.
Then she got a phone call to say the nurses' strike meant her surgery was off.
"When you're so set on a date, it really broke me I cried on the bus - it was really embarrassing," she says.
But Ms Redman soon thought of her best friend, who is about to become a nurse, and her mother, who has been a children's and emergency department nurse for 10 years.
"My first initial thought was about myself, which is kind of sad to think," she says.
"But then, thinking about my mum not having the money she deserves. She's still renting, she'll never be able to buy a house in New Zealand - and she does one of the most important jobs."
So instead of donning her hospital gown, Ms Redman spent Thursday reflecting.
"I hope that she gets paid more, I hope the nurses get paid more in general, I hope there are more people encouraged to want to become a nurse," she told Newshub.
And the teenager says she'd sacrifice more postponed surgeries to see nurses get the conditions and pay they're fighting for.
Newshub.
