Did you miss me? I missed you! But my computer’s breakdown came at a pretty opportune time, as it gave me a few days to focus on my health. Here’s the latest news.
First, a quick recap: a pelvic exam suggested that I might have fibroids. My doctor ordered an ultrasound to confirm the diagnosis, but the results weren’t quite clear. I was handed off to a teaching clinic for more testing.
Or so I thought.
The doctor walked into the exam room and greeted me with a cheery, “So, you’re here to talk about surgery?” After I picked my jaw up off the floor, I stammered out what the first doctor had said about unclear results and more testing.
The new doctor pulled out the radiologist report from my ultrasound and reviewed it with me. He went over the dimensions of my uterus and growths. He drew me a picture of a healthy uterus, then sketched in the two growths — one the size of a mandarin orange and one the size of a football. The smaller one is located inside the uterus, and is more like a “common” fibroid or cyst. The larger one is located inside the walls of the uterus, and is going to limit my treatment options.
And yes, they are fibroids — the doctors are 99% sure. There is a very faint chance the growths might be cancerous (like one in one thousand), but given my symptoms and history, it is very very likely that they are just weird, big fibroids.
Basically, I have three options for treatment.
Option One: do nothing. The growth may get bigger and cause more discomfort, but it won’t kill me.
Option Two: myomectomy, or removal of the growths. The advantage of this treatment is that it will most likely preserve the uterus for future fertility, if I should desire a family. The disadvantage of this comes from the larger growth. Both the doctor and the surgeon I spoke with were concerned about being able to close the wound after removing the large growth — and being able to stop the bleeding. They said that during surgery, if they attempted the myomectomy and couldn’t stop the bleeding, they would end up having to take the entire uterus out anyway. Another disadvantage is that the fibroids could grow back.
Option Three: hysterectomy, or removal of the uterus. The advantage of this treatment is that it will cure the fibroid problem completely. They can’t grow back if there’s nowhere to grow! The disadvantage of this is the loss of fertility. My ovaries would probably stay, unless the doctors found something wrong with them during surgery.
Both surgeries would be open surgeries through my abdomen — not laproscopic (using a smaller incision and a camera) or vaginal (doing their work through my vagina). This is partly because of the size of the growth and partly because they are concerned about possible damage to other organs in the area. Open surgery gives them a much clearer view of how the growths are interacting with the bladder, stomach, intestines, and other important parts.
I asked about hormone treatments, to help shrink the growths. There is one treatment that induces a false menopause that has been shown to reliably shrink fibroid growths — either in preparation for surgery or for temporary relief of symptoms. But this treatment can only be used for three to six months because of the way it interrupts normal hormone function. It would not be a permanent cure.
I had a pretty big decision on my hands.