Fibroids

Oh wow, I wasn’t expecting those replies, I think I just thought I had to get on with it and it was normal!! I’m going to phone them now and tell them I want to be put under - thank you so much for making me aware of this!

I was sexually abused as a child, so the whole thing is already deeply traumatic for me - it took me two years of therapy to even go to see a doctor about the issues I’d been having, so I’ve just been so focused on trying to get myself through it, but I have been really concerned that if it was painful, it could set me back, so I won’t take that risk now.

Noooooooo please don't let them do that to you.

Is it possible to get a 2nd opinion?

My last surgery (last week) was a hysteroscopic surgery where one small (ca. 1 cm) fibroid was cut out and the surgeon didn't even mention doing the procedure with no or local anesthesia. He said that his hysteroscopic surgeries are always done with general anesthesia.

I'm not in the UK, so maybe that explains the different approaches. But honestly, what your doctor is suggesting sounds barbaric and uncaring.

@Naunet - what???? Jesus. I would go back and demand it's done under a GA unless there's a good reason why you can't have one.

I was fobbed off for years too. It was totally debilitating - fibroids, endometriosis - and just dismissed by the doctors. I eventually went privately out of desperation and was immediately scheduled in for a hysterectomy. The consultant said it was really bad - 5 massive fibroids, lots of adhesions, and no wonder I'd been having so much trouble.

Women's healthcare is shockingly bad under the NHS. We are told to just put up with it and piss off. It makes me really angry.

It’s being done via a hysteroscopy and they told me some women don’t feel anything and others find it extremely painful, but there’s no way to predict (I doubt that, I bet if there was some research into it they could find many indicating factors), but they seem to be ignoring the fact that they’ll also be cutting out the fibroid, as if that’s not even a factor!

The heck? I just had two surgeries for fibroids; the first one in January was an inpatient open stomach surgery and the second an outpatient hyseroscopic myomectomy last week. Both were under general anesthesia!

What your doctors are proposing sounds barbaric!

I'm off to hospital tomorrow for a hysterectomy because of fibroids. Have been on the waiting list for over a year. About four years of issues because of them.

It's shit.

I’ve got a fairly large one currently growing through my cervix apparently, they want to cut it out without anaesthetic. I’m considering insisting I want to be put under, but then no doubt I’ll have to wait another god knows how many months for a new appointment.

Oh, the "just period pain" brush off. I got that aged 26 from a male GP after I'd been brought into his office hyperventilating and vomiting.

At times my uterus resembled a gynaecological horror story. I was treated for endometriosis and ovarian cysts in 1991: before laparoscopic surgery was available, but fortunately also before GnRh antagonists were handed out to endometriosis patients. The really infuriating thing was it took me nearly two years to find a doctor who take me seriously, though I was having debilitating pain attacks.

Then in 2021 I had a bad reaction to my Covid vaccination, bleeding for two weeks, heavily, after my first shot and my booster, when I really thought I'd done with that part of my life. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise because my GP whisked me in for a scan and discovered I not only had a reoccurrence of the endometriosis and a budding cyst, but also fibroids and uterine hyperplasia. After more tests I found myself in hospital having a hysterectomy, because my specialist feared that I might have cancer. Luckily the cancer scare turned out to be just a scare, but I felt so much better getting rid of the fibroids.

The thing I take away from all this is we really need better education about our own bodies. I suspect that my endometriosis had been building for ages before it became acutely painful, but I just dismissed the symptoms as bad periods. Likewise I put the symptoms of the fibroids down to perimenopause. Things would have been so much simpler if I'd been able to consult a "For Dummies" guide to tell me what was normal and what needed checking out!

I wish I could share some wonder cure. I can't but I can totally empathise with the description! I had a blazing row with one clueless gynacologist once when he started in on the it's just periods shit. I do wonder if he was less condescending to his female patients going forward. As he looked genuinely scared!

How many of us on here have suffered/are suffering from fibroids and/or endo? It’s shocking. Another one here. Crazily painful periods from age 12 to late 40s, told to put up with it because it was 'normal'. Then finally diagnosed with an ovarian cyst and fibroids by one GP, only to be dismissed by another who disagreed. Had to see a consultant privately in the end. Guess what - it turned out to be endometriosis on top of everything else. What joy.

@SpecialControlGroup I'm so sorry, that sounds utterly horrendous ☹️

@Boiledbeetle I'm so sorry for what you went through!
I did have one regular op for my fibroids and lost so much blood, I needed 2 transfusions. But that was in the 80s.
I advise any woman here with an ongoing condition to have her gynaecologist be a professor. They know all the latest medicines and research. And both mine (men) were very compassionate.

My fibroids mean I'm in significant pain for 3 weeks a month with pain from my knees to my belly button, I can't sleep on my front because it's like sleeping on a bowling ball and bleed so heavily I have to have blood transfusions because I keep getting so anaemic that it's required

The (male, obvs) gynaecologist told me 'it's just periods, most women manage fine with some ibuprofen and a hot water bottle without making such a fuss' and that losing weight will sort it out. I take 6 x 30/500 co-codamol a day plus 6 x mefenamic acid a day during my period to get my pain to a level where I don't faint/vomit (but it's still significant)

I lost 4 stone and I have been bleeding worse than ever.......

Unfortunately I couldn't take Tranexamic acid.

I'm glad to hear you had success with your ablation. My ablation was done under general anaesthetic, took three hours and didn't work.

I think I'm cursed!!!

This is horrible; how crappy women are treated and left to suffer.
It's not normal!
And there are great pills to help reabsorb the blood.Tranexamic acid! I had them in Ireland, they've been used safety in Scandinavia for over 20 years .
Laser ablation is quick and with a local anesthetic painless!! Why the feck aren't you getting this,!

So many shocking stories here.
My problem fibroid was a pedunculate one that prolapsed through the cervix. But because of the ridiculous shortage of access to ultrasound scans they only realised this when they tried to do an ablation.
So stupid of the NHS to skimp on women’s health like this. If they had diagnosed and treated it in a timely manner they would have saved the cost of an emergency ambulance admission, months of gp appointments and drugs and an operation that was much more complicated and with longer recovery than it need have been.

@ArabellaScott bizarrely that fuck up by an inattentive surgeon changed the entire trajectory of my life. It was my sliding doors moment as the choices I made in the days and months that followed were made purely because there are things I realised I needed to do now because there may be no tomorrow! I would thank him but I still hate his guts too much!

I have huge fibroids that caused serious issues in my first pregnancy. I was told by nurses that fibroids do not cause pain and I was being ridiculous/making it up to get extra pain relief.

I ended up in hospital for a week, then later the pain was so bad it masked the contractions so they refused to believe I was in labour. My DD almost died and both of us were very ill for months.

Over 3yrs later I still haven't had them removed as I moved to the next county and they aren't interested in following up like my previous hospital was. Luckily it didn't affect my second pregnancy much, but I'm starting to have more and more pain and bleeding on a regular basis.

Of course my expensive health insurance has written out anything to do with female specific health issues all because I have fibroids.

💐to all . just been and read everyone's posts. Life is shit as a woman!

I was in pain for years. Eventually offered an ultrasound where they found fibroids. Told "we don't treat fibroids any longer in Worcestershire", but they'll shrink when you got menopause. It seems they don't treat a lot of women's health issues any longer (or ever...)

Another fibroids, cysts and endometriosis sufferer! was fobbed off for 12 years originally so from 10 until 22 I was just expected to shut up and get on with it.

The amount of hospital stays and operations over the years has been ridiculous! Mainly because no-one would do anything until something burst or caused me so much pain I'd arrive in an ambulance.

They cut through my bowel during one operation to treat the endometriosis and some fibroids then spent two days telling me that I needed to shut up as i was upsetting the other patients, there was nothing wrong with me and i just had a low threshold to pain.

I found out much later that I died on my way back into the operating room for the life saving second operation to remove the septic severed bits of bowel!

It took another good few years for me to get up the never to have another much needed operation and the first hospital refused to treat me as they were scared they'd fuck up again so they had to find a different hospital and surgeon who was prepared to operate.

He's absolutely fantastic and does regular scans now to monitor everything. But it took way to many decades of my life to get satisfactory health care.

If this was a male condition the care would be so much better.

Yup. Massively outing but I had a huge one causing loads of pain whilst it was degenerating but kept getting fobbed off then I ended up having emergency surgery cos the f*cker ruptured and I was bleeding internally. Then it turned out to be cancer. My situation is insanely rare / unfortunate but another example of women's health / conditions not being taken seriously.