#but i luckily stopped myself bc i remembered he could have trauma or something

[rebellum]

Last night I almost jokingly called my partner a faggot and was like oh shit wait I should ask first, and he explained his boundaries around the term, but anyways the important part of this post is that he said something that's funny but also stuck with me

"I mean... I AM a faggot. Also, I feel like if you're dating a faggot, you have to be a little faggoty yourself"

And that second sentence is living in my head rent free it's following me around like a little butterfly

[prettylittleliarsxxxx]

Same anon if you don’t mind me asking how?

Not at all! This will be long and tw it will include talk of periods and blood and near death experiences.

When I was in 8th grade, I started having really irregular periods. Not just like oh this one is 3 days long and this one is 7 and it’s a different flow each time. Nah, I was bleeding or spotting ever day. For about 6 months. And it kept on that way, really irregular, long periods. So I went to the doctor. He put me on birth control pills to help regulate it and the first pill I was on gave me leg cramps so I got off it and then I had myself referred to another OBGYN because I didn’t like this guy 

And so we started doing ultrasounds and nothing was showing so we just tried to regulate it with a diff pill, but eventually, in about high school, found out that I had uterine fibroids which are basically non cancerous (they can be but are normally not) growths on or in the uterus. 

Because I was so young, my OBGYN didn’t want to do any invasive surgeries to try and fix them. A lot of the surgeries to stop their growth while they’re small often had negative effects on fertility and I was like 16 years old. So we made a plan and tried to use BC pills to keep it at bay (low estrogen because high estrogen can actually make them grow larger) and to keep the bleeding down. 

I had bi-yearly ultrasounds, internal ultrasounds as well, to monitor growth. I had MRI’s to determine the exact location (mine was closer to my back which made it in a very tricky spot too). I eventually was put on pain meds for my cramps because with extra growths, you know, I could hardly walk when I’d have cramps. Also got put on a medication that was supposed to help heavy bleeding but the kicker is you can only be on it for like 7 days every month or every other month or something because it’s so dangerous if taken regularly.

Eventually, BC pills stopped helping and really out of nowhere it just starting growing like crazy and the bigger it got, the harder it was going to be to get rid of and we were running out of options. 

The bleeding got worse and worse to the point where it’s a huge reason why I dropped out of college, I couldn’t go out because I would bleed so much. I had a problem with passing ginormous clots (like grapefruit sized clots). 

And then one night, luckily after I had moved out of my ex’s, I was getting ready for bed and I went to go pee and I was losing so much blood and I got really dizzy and I managed to stumble out of the bathroom and get to my mom’s room and say “I don’t feel good” and then I started passing out. 

My mom called 911 and they absolutely did not believe that this was from my period lol they thought I had overdosed or some whacky shit but I couldn’t stay conscious, they had me sit on a chair to try and stay with it but my mom said I kept convulsing so they put me on the floor and started an IV and took me to the hospital. By the time I got to the trauma bay, they were able to stop my bleeding, but I was one or two points off from needing a blood transfusion because it was my red blood cell count was SO low. My iron count was also dangerously low. 

With iron, you normally reproduce iron to make up for what you lose, and it gets stored in your bone marrow (or something like that aslkghlahsg) and I had lost all of the iron I’d ever had, like literally all of it. After I was released, I was sleeping for 16 hours a day because I was SO anemic and I needed to get IV Iron treatments because eating iron rich foods and supplements wouldn’t have given me enough iron back. Once my iron levels and red blood cell count got back to normal, I was scheduled for a hysterectomy.

Turns out, I had one giant one (which my doctor said was the equivalent of a six month pregnancy and the size of a basketball) and a bunch of small ones. They were able to keep my ovaries so I don’t need HRT and I didn’t have to go through menopause at 21 so that’s awesome. But yeah. 

“About 20 percent to 80 percent of women develop fibroids by the time they reach age 50. Fibroids are most common in women in their 40s and early 50s. Not all women with fibroids have symptoms.“ -- a vast majority of women who do have fibroids often have small ones that never need intervention or are asymptomatic. 

Being so young and having almost none of the common ‘risk factors’, doctors were quite baffled and my OBGYN consistently consulted with other experts and professionals about my case. 

Here are some photos of how it affected my body. A lot of people would see these photos and assume I’m either fat or pregnant. Almost my entire belly there is my uterus. The average uterus is 3-4 inches. Remember that my fibroid was the size of a basketball. In the middle photo, you can actually see it. That’s all fibroid. I actually have a photo of my uterus after he removed it (.....I wanted to see it so I requested photos LMAO) which I won’t post because it’s obviously too graphic but my surgeon put his hand splayed out next to it and it’s larger than that. 

weird anecdote: I went in for an ultrasound once and obviously the techs have your file and stuff and I was you know lying there half naked waiting for an invasive vaginal exam and the tech comes in and she’s looking at my file and she looks at me and she goes “You’re not black!” I was like ... nope....I...I’m not...... and that was when I learned that black women are 3 times more likely to develop fibroids, and they tend to develop them at a younger age.