Thirty-one days, thirty-one posts for the Slice of Life Story Challenge.
I pulled up the lab report again, then pulled out my tape measure. I'm a visual learner...found fifteen inches, matched it up to the zero at the end to make a circle.
A little more than a grapefruit, little less than a cantaloupe. Either way, my largest fibroid had been taking up quite a bit of abdominal real estate.
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When I first got diagnosed, I went down a rabbit hole of internet research. Figured out what kinds of fibroids I had, what the different treatments were, what the side effects could be. I was shocked when I read the statistics: up to eighty percent of women will experience some kind of fibroids, most during their childbearing years. Eighty percent.
So then I started wondering--why don't we know more about this, especially with numbers so high? Why aren't we screened for them at every annual exam? Why aren't we talking more about this?
The answer, of course, is the lack of research on women's health issues. The algorithm handed me one way to help with that problem today. I made a small donation to the Foundation for Women's Health, after spending some time reading up on their mission and medical advisory board.
I can only hope that progress will be made before my daughter faces a situation similar to mine. After all, there is an eight in ten chance she will...
I wish I didn’t know where this was going before reading. In the medical community women don’t matter much, so ed must advocate for ourselves and insist on being listened to. It’s upsetting. At least your daughter will have you to help along the way.
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