The specialist explained what was going on inside my uterus and described the discomfort that can accompany fibroids during pregnancy.
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My own doctor agreed and recommended one. I decided I would need to steer my care myself.Ī relative who happens to be a specialist in high-risk obstetrics suggested I seek out a doctor like her, who might have more experience treating patients with pregnancy complications. I began to question whether my obstetrician, who was otherwise supportive, had enough experience with a condition that may be less common in her pool of patients. With this second hospital stay, I felt oddly validated, but my trust in my doctors was quickly waning. One month after my trip to the emergency room, and one day after my OB-GYN told me again to “try Tylenol,” I was back in the hospital with debilitating pain - a different fibroid was the culprit, but the sensation was just as searing. I turned to late night scrolling, trolling the web for answers, but struggling to find descriptions that matched my own experience. If the fibroids weren’t responsible, like my doctor suggested, I needed to find out what was. I’d been pregnant before, this felt different. I began feeling like a bothersome patient desperate to have my pain taken seriously. Her pat responses offered little comfort: Fibroids don’t usually hurt, she’d say, and what I felt was likely the discomfort of pregnancy.
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Since I’d been told I wouldn’t be experiencing any further pain, I repeatedly asked my obstetrician what could be causing it. Where was this “normal pregnancy” I’d been promised? Bed rest and heating pads became part of my daily routine. And as the baby grew, so did the pressure on my other two fibroids. If I walked more than a few blocks, I would pay with more pain. The recommended over-the-counter pain relievers had no effect. When I came home from the hospital, the intense pain from my degenerated fibroid lessened, but never fully went away. This can happen when a patient isn’t pregnant, she added, but the increased hormones of pregnancy can trigger a fibroid to break down. Hilda Hutcherson, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. When a healthy fibroid is not getting enough blood flow it “stops growing and shrinks,” and can become very painful, said Dr. My doctors said I should go on to have a normal pregnancy. I was sent home with a recommendation to take an over-the-counter pain reliever, if necessary, and an assurance that the pain would eventually subside. My degenerating fibroid was sparking regular contractions and a sharp pain radiating from my left side. The irritation and inflammation around the area of cell death can cause the uterine walls to contract, a doctor later told me. But after three days of ultrasounds and a slew of other tests, they ruled out early delivery and settled on a diagnosis that would explain my throbbing abdomen and early contractions: a fibroid that had grown so large it had become starved and was dying.Ī degenerating fibroid, as it’s called, happens when a uterine fibroid - a benign tumor that develops from the muscle tissue of the uterus - outgrows its blood supply.
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Initially perplexed, the emergency room doctors prepared me for a potentially premature birth, a possibility that never fully sunk in. To distract us from our rising panic we chatted as if it was a normal drive, but I told him to stop making me laugh - it hurt too much.
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My husband was at the wheel, speeding toward the nearest hospital while also timing my contractions. At five months pregnant with my second child, I clutched my cramping stomach, trying in vain to prop myself into a comfortable position in the passenger seat of the car.