Didn’t You Know?!
A Guide to Understanding What You Weren’t Taught About Your Uterus
This one’s for the ladies. I feel ignorant and am writing this so that maybe you don’t have to. On the other hand, perhaps this is something I should have known, which seemed to be the reaction of the first couple of doctors I saw with their wide eyes and their “didn’t you know?!” bafflement.
Here’s what I do know. As a woman, you bleed. A lot. Every month. It sucks and you deal with it. You shove stuff in there and pad stuff down there and go to work and get those reports in before 5pm and put on a good face for the meetings and, in my case, sometimes sail a boat across open water with no internet to consult. Then, when your feet swell and turn blue, you tighten your laces and pull the lines on the sails.
Something I vaguely knew was that this bleeding can get worse as you get closer to the final fertile years as some sort of pre-menopause. Some people said I was still too young for that (I’m now 45), but I remembered my mother going through something when she was around this age. I checked in with her. Sure enough. I also caught wind that my sister-in-law who is the same age I am was having similar issues. So I bumped up the products to super plus and overnight, doubled up on them, and thought little of going through all of it after an hour or so. I added a third layer like period underwear when I needed two hours between bathroom breaks and even a fourth adult diaper layer when I had to sleep in someone else’s boat and was terrified of not waking every hour to address the issue.
Here’s something else I know. As a woman, as you get older, you get bigger in the middle. No matter the diet or exercise, your metabolism catches up to you and there’s not a ton you can do, but buy the mom jeans and embrace the elastic waist, and keep cutting the carbs and doing the crunches anyway.
Here is what I didn’t know. Many women develop fibroids. I’ve found a lot of different percentages including Johns Hopkins giving the vast span of 20–70 percent of women, but suffice it to say that they are pretty common for women between the ages of 30 and 50. Yet I had never heard of them. I’d never heard of them, but I was farming them quite efficiently. I have at least 7, one is about tennis ball size and is entering a cavity in my uterus, which is the culprit for the heavy bleeding. But let me explain in case you have never heard of them either. Actually, I’ll hand it over to Mayo Clinic for a hot take:
Uterine fibroids are noncancerous growths of the uterus that often appear during childbearing years. Also called leiomyomas (lie-o-my-O-muhs) or myomas, uterine fibroids aren’t associated with an increased risk of uterine cancer and almost never develop into cancer.
Fibroids range in size from seedlings, undetectable by the human eye, to bulky masses that can distort and enlarge the uterus. You can have a single fibroid or multiple ones. In extreme cases, multiple fibroids can expand the uterus so much that it reaches the rib cage and can add weight.
That’s me. I’m that last bit with a uterus that was determined back in November to have expanded to the equivalent of a 6–7 month pregnancy. I feel the little guy in there poking me in the ribs and have named the largest culprit Virginia. This was very obviously fibroids to my doctor during a routine pelvic exam that lead to the first “Didn’t you know?” I didn’t. I thought I was just a woman and I was getting older and I had a report to get on the bosses desk before the day was done.
Here’s what I know now. Lots of women get fibroids. Some of those women will never even know because they are small and don’t show any symptoms. Some will be discovered and causing trouble, but if they are still small enough, they can be shrunk with medication and just hang out for the rest of your lady life and go pretty dormant come menopause. Some fibroids will have grown too large to be handled with medication and will require surgery.
A myomectomy is surgery that cuts the fibroids out and keeps the uterus to maintain fertility. This can be handled with no incisions, or laparoscopic ones, or in my case, the issue is so extreme an incision is required that is similar to a c-section. The other surgical option is a hysterectomy to remove the uterus entirely. Be prepared for this conversation. Doctors will lean toward hysterectomy because it is easier and guarantees that the fibroids can’t return because you took their entire home away. This was a tough conversation I had to have with too many people too many times, so I won’t go into any more here except to acknowledge that it is a difficult decision for a woman to remove her uterus entirely and it’s okay to hurt, and and it’s okay to have to think that through and talk it through with your partner, and it’s okay to keep it if that is what you decide to do.
So here is where my experience has led. The years of extreme bleeding had made me severely anemic, so I have been taking iron supplements 3 times/day for 3.5 months. In my anemic state, I could not undergo surgery, but my blood is looking good now. There is a lot of blood that flows to the uterus, which is great for growing babies, but tough on surgery, so I am on a medication to assist in shutting some of that down, especially to the tumors, which I have to take twice per day for a month before surgery. In a couple weeks I have another pre-surgery clearance physical, another meeting with the surgeon, then a COVID test. The following week I will enter the hospital for surgery and expect to have to stay a couple days. During surgery the blood I lose will be cleaned and recycled back into me, which I find fascinating and cool. The first week of recovery is going to be tough and full recovery should come in 8 weeks.
So in case you have never heard of fibroids, there you go. If you feel you may have some symptoms like heavy bleeding, extended uterus, problems using the bathroom, pelvic or back pain, hit up your doctor and go in for a pelvic exam.
I hope this helps you catch them early and know the things that we women should be taught and not just learn that we should expect to suffer with a smile and keep on with our daily lives while our bodies are demanding our attention.
