My First Symptom from Uterine Fibroids

My doctor and I recently spoke to a group of African American nurses during a seminar about having my having uterine fibroids and the general treatment methods used for fibroid tumors. Here's a portion of that seminar. In this video, I discuss my first symptom.



Thedy B

Menstrual Cycle v. No Menstrual Cycle Pt 3

The more and more I think about it, the more I feel that women should strongly look into whether unnaturally stopping your menstrual cycle is a good thing. Would you stop yourself from urinating? Would you stop yourself from having a bowel movement? Would you stop yourself from sweating? So unless you have to, why would you stop your menstruation? Again, I know first hand what's it's like to have a very heavy flow and I mean very heavy. I know it's tempting to want to just get rid of your menstruation so that you won't have problems with a heavy flow, or have concerns about soiling your clothes, or losing so much blood that you need a transfusion, with problems from fatigue from losing a lot of blood every month, taking iron pills so that you can replenish the iron in your body that's been lost, etc. All of those are real symptoms and real reasons to consider using a birth control method that you think will help you deal with the blood flow.


But I want you to ask your doctor whether taking birth control is in fact exacerbating your symptoms or whether taking this birth control will cause other more permanent problems?

I was on the Patch. And during a presentation where my radiologist and I were presenting on uterine atery embolization or uterine fibroid embolization (UFE), I asked him that same question and he said anything that has hormones in it will cause an imbalance of estrogen in your body which causes your fibroids to grow. Anything means food, birth control pills, and anything else that is known to have added hormones in it.

Some birth control has more estrogen in it than others he said; some have none and some have a lot. Some of it just depends on the strength of the birth control you use. So check with your doctor about whether the birth control you use is helping or hurting you and make sure you know the long term effects of stopping your menstruation. Again, in the sidebar of this blog are books on the subject of menstruation and birth control. Take a look at them and purchase them if you want facts about either.

Thedy B



Thedy B

The Menstual Cycle Calendar

My GYN had me track my menstrual cycles after I found out I had uterine fibroids. The object of using this menstrual cycle calendar was to see when my menstrual cycle began, when it ended, whether the bleeding was heavy, normal or light, and to see the distance between each cycle.


Growing up I had had painful cramping during that time of the month. Eventually as an adult, my menstrual cycle normalized. My menstrual cycles were always regular in that they came at the same time. From time to time, I'd just put a note on my regular calendar of when my menstrual cycle began and when it ended.



A menstrual cycle calendar is different. The menstrual cycle calendar I used had all twelve months on it lined up in rows with 31 days acting as each month's columns. It looks like that so you can see your cycle's patterns on a monthly basis side by side. Each day of the month was essentially a box. There are instructions on the calendar which tell you to note the day of the month the cycle begins and when you note it, color in the box to denote the extent of the bleeding. The way you colored in the box showed how heavy your menstruation was.



This menstrual cycle calendar helped me and my GYN determine if my menstrual cycle was affected by the uterine fibroids. I'm not a physician but as a patient going through this, I do recommend getting and using a menstrual cycle calendar if you notice that your cycles and/or your bleeding is not normal. In the next blog, I'll tell you the advantages I saw from using a menstrual cycle calendar.

Thedy

The Patch or Uterine Fibroids?

As I said in my previous blog, I was on the Patch. The Patch was my preferred choice of birth control to use so that I could use Accutane, a very strong medication for the treatment of severe acne. I was on the Patch for a couple of months I believe.

I'm not sure how long afterwards that I noticed it but I did notice it: break through bleeding or spotting. When I should have been off my period, I was experiencing spotting. I was told spotting sometimes happens with using the Patch (again, consult YOUR doctor on any of your symptoms and get proper medical advice). Spotting had never before been a problem for me. So it was a good chance that since I also had never used the Patch before, that the two were linked. But my GYN and I weren't sure whether my spotting was from using the Patch, from possibly not putting the Patch on the day I needed to replace it, or whether it was coming from the fibroids. I was hoping that the spotting was from using the Patch and not from the fibroids. My hope was that if I stopped using the Patch, then presumably, the spotting would stop too. So I was advised to temporarily stop using the Patch just to find out. Consequently, I also had to stop using Accutane, which was clearing up my acne. (see my first blog on this story).

The results: The spotting did stop after I temporarily stopped using the Patch so I discontinued using the Patch completely. Though the spotting stopped, my GYN still wanted to make sure that my menstrual cycle was otherwise regular and that the uterine fibroids I had were still asymptomatic, so she gave me a menstrual cycle calendar.

I'll tell you more about the menstrual cycle calendar in future blogs.

About Fibroids - My Personal Story

I found out I had uterine fibroids. I had been going to my general practitioner and getting regular examinations done, thinking everything should be as it always has been. My general practitioner never saw or mentioned fibroids to me and I had been going to him for years!

How did I find out? I had a severe case of acne. I had been dealing with acne pretty much all my life. My dermatologist and/or I had tried just about everything except for Accutane. (For a more detailed blog on my struggle with acne, and my treatment for it, check out my blog on victory over acne). Last ditch effort: I decided to use Accutane. The makers of Accutane want to ensure you don't get pregnant while taking the medication because of severe birth defects that occur as a side effect of taking the medications and getting pregnant. So to be placed on Accutane, you had to essentially be on birth control. To get birth control, I choose to go to a gynecologist. The gynecologist required that I do a full examination. Accutane required, among other things, that I go to the GYN every month to do pregnancy tests. So I stopped going to my GP and started using the GYN exclusively for examinations. It was during one of those routine pap smears that my GYN casually mentioned I had fibroids. Not one but three to be exact! They were small but tangible.

I was devastated. What? Fibroids! Why? How? Why didn't I know? Why didn't my general practitioner tell me? How big? What do I do?

I didn't know I had fibroids at all. My cycles were pretty regular at the time so I had no cause for alarm. Because the fibroids were asymptomatic, my GYN said I didn't need to do anything. She said all we needed to do is observe them to see if they remained asymptomatic. According to her, many women have fibroids and don't even know it. Many women have fibroids and the fibroids simply stay asymptomatic. So I was hoping and praying for the best. I can just go on with no problems. Unfortunately, I didn't stay asymptomatic.

To continue reading my personal story, keep coming back to this blog.