It took me 3 years to find the courage to write this post. It’s raw, it’s personal, and slightly heartbreaking. But if I’m going to share my life I know that I have to share the not so pretty parts as well.
If you follow me on Instagram, you see me share a lot about how living with fibroids has COMPLETELY changed my life in a negative way. I’ve gotten many dm’s with people asking questions like how did I know I had them etc. so I will attempt to address those questions here.
The Heartbreak
In 2017 I married my best friend. Life was great. We were living comfortably in our home with my daughter Jayla. Fast forward to 2018, I decided to get an IUD because we knew we wouldn’t be ready to starting trying for 2-3 years. Well, the IUD turned out to be a HUGE mistake. Somewhere in the mix of it all, the IUD dislodged without my knowledge and I became pregnant. We were married so although unplanned, having a baby would not have been the end of the world. At about 10 weeks I started to experience extreme heavy bleeding like someone turned on a faucet and just let the water run. I’m sure you can gather from the above that the baby didn’t make it. I won’t share much more on this topic because it honestly still breaks my heart to talk about it.
This was the incident that caused me to find out I have fibroids. At the time they were quite small and after the miscarriage they didn’t affect my life too much. Until later that year, the faucet turned back on for the ENTIRE month of August. I went through this cycle of being fine for 4-5 months and then having a crazy cycle until July of 2019. My Dr. and I decided it was time to try surgical intervention. That month he performed a hysterscopic myomectomy (we chose the least invasive procedure to preserve fertility). The procedure was pretty straight forward. I felt like crap for about a week but I was hopeful. A few months went by, things were normal with my cycle until.
December 2019 just in time for the holidays. The faucet is back. We decide it’s time to switch up my birth control in hopes of it controlling the faucet. During both incidents I become extremely anemic requiring multiple rounds of iron infusions. Of course we can all remember what happened in 2020, but thankfully for the 1st several months when the world was shut down my body played nice until it didn’t. It was almost as though my body waited until the world started to reopen to start acting a fool again. The faucet returned in June (these suckers are real haters and love to mess up the summer months for me). So let’s fast forward to September – October 2020. That damn faucet is back on. I’m anemic, I’m weak, I’m exhausted, I’m just plain hopeless. November 2, 2020 I have a hysteroscopy with D&C. I recover for a couple weeks and November and December are great.
Happy new year?! The faucet that damn f$&king faucet is back. It has literally changed how I run my life. For the most part I am afraid to leave my house for fear of having a blood bath in public. At the time of writing this I am extremely anemic again. My skin is pale, my hair has been shedding, and I’m in pain 90% of the time. I have no energy to workout or do everyday things that most women are able to do.
So what’s next?
I’ve been avoiding the big procedure because of fear, but now it’s time to put on my big girl panties and do it. This is no way to live and I want my quality of life back. So today is the day. I am getting a myomectomy. I chose this procedure because I am NOT willing to give up on my baby. If it doesn’t happen I want to feel assured that I did everything I possibly could before closing that door. I am hopeful and of course prayerful that once this is all over growing our family can be an option.
I am also hopeful that this procedure (although way more invasive) will give me my life back. I’ll be home recovering for 3 or more weeks, but hopeful that once the full recovery time of 6-8 weeks is done that I can get back to being me. The joke cracking, weight slinging, creative meal cooking, hanging out with friends ME.
This post is obviously very personal and it took me years to be ready enough to write it. There are so many women suffering with fibroids, fertility issues, heavy bleeding, constant pain, anemia, and all of the other terrible symptoms this icky condition causes. This post is for you. I see you , I hear you, I am you.