Hysterectomy: Is it Really Our Choice?

I say this, because for the past five years I have been fighting to be "granted" the permission to have a hysterectomy. Never the less, regardless of how strong my argument is, my efforts have proven to be in vain. There just doesn't seem to be a doctor, or hospital that will perform a hysterectomy on me. I write this article in hopes that other women will jump on the bandwagon and help fight for us to have our right to make this decision for ourselves if we choose to do so. This is my personal story.

For more than 10 years I have suffered from various "female" related issues. My menstrual cycle started for me when I was very young, 11 years old, and I have never, ever had an easy time with it. For starters, I have never had a regular menstrual cycle. By that I mean that I have never consistently gotten my period month after month. Then at the age of 16 or so, I got my period, and it lasted for 4 months! You can imagine how this was not only mentally distressing, but also physically draining for me. I eventually got to the point where I was not even able to get up and go to school. No matter what the doctors tried, they were not able to get my menstrual cycle to stop. At about the three month point, I ended up having to drop out of school because my school would not allow me to be home schooled, and I couldn't even begin to think about getting out of bed! I was in my junior year of high school, and because I had missed so many days, I was going to have to repeat the year. My mother allowed me to make the decision to repeat the year, or drop out and get my GED. I decided to go the GED route, simply for the fact that I was scared that if I did decide to repeat the year, the same thing might happen to me again! The doctors couldn't stop it from happening at that point, so I had no faith that they could stop if from future occurrences.

Finally, after about the 4 month mark, the bleeding was stopping on it's own. At that point, the doctors decided to try and put me on birth control pills to help regulate my cycle. Six months, and four birth control brands later, they finally found something that worked for me. For two wonderful years I did manage to get my period regularly. Then however, my body started to become "immune" to the pills, and stopped being effective. It was back to the irregular periods for me. Now I by no means mean to imply that my doctors were inept at what they were doing. They did every test they could possibly think of to try and find out what was wrong with me. While the testing on my hormones and thyroid did come back slightly irregular, anything that they gave me for it was of no help. Once the birth control pills stopped working for me, I pretty much just threw my hands in the air and gave up. I was so tired of being poked and prodded by doctors, I pretty much just excepted my fate, and realized I was doomed to live a life of suffering whenever my period decided to pay me a visit.

A few years went by, and by the time I was around 22 or so, I had actually gotten used to everything being "irregular." It was around that I started having excruciating pain when I did get my period. As you can imagine I was extremely hesitant to go to the doctor. Not only because I did not feel like going through all of that testing again, but because I had moved to a different state and was going to have to deal with a whole new doctor. Even so, the pain started to get so bad, and I started to bleed more heavily, so I knew it was time to go to the doctor. More poking, more prodding, more tests...but this time they came up with a diagnosis for everything! I suffer from Endometriosis and Poly-cystic Ovaries.

Now for a quick description of the two. The clinical definition of endometriosis is "an abnormal growth of endometrial cells." Endometrial cells, or tissue, is what forms inside your uterus and is shed when you have a menstrual cycle. Endometriosis is when this tissue forms outside the uterus in other areas of your body. The tissue then develops into small growths. These growths respond to the hormonal cycle, which means that when a menstrual cycle occurs, the tissue attempts to "shed" like endometrial tissue should. The problems is, since it has formed outside of your uterus, there is no vaginal opening for it to pass through out of your body. The result of this is internal bleeding, inflammation of the surrounding areas, degeneration of the blood and tissue shed from the growths and the formation of scar tissue. Doesn't sound very pleasant does it? And though it is true that some women do not experience any symptoms at all from this, 40-60% of women that have endometriosis suffer from painful periods and 20-30% have difficulty in conceiving.

Poly-cystic Ovaries or PCOS, is another "pleasant" thing. PCOS is characterized by the formation of follicular cysts in the ovaries, a process that is related to the ovaries failure to release an egg. Symptoms include menstrual problems, excessive body or facial hair, endocrine abnormalities, obesity and infertility. PCOS can have considerable long-term effects such as heart disease, diabetes and endometrial or breast cancer. Again, something absolutely wonderful to be suffering from! There is no cure for either of these problems. As far as medication goes, birth control pills have shown some success in slowing the growth of endometrial tissue, and help balance the hormones which can cause PCOS. This however, is only a way to slow the processes. There is no medicine that reverses or stops these diseases. I decided to go ahead, and give the birth control a try, to see if might help to at least minimize the symptoms that I suffered from. During my first cycle of birth control pills, I started to bleed. The bleeding continued for 5 months. Taking me off the pills didn't help, putting me on different pills didn't help, nothing was helping! It was then that I decided that I wanted a hysterectomy. I had serious problems with my "reproductive" organs and it was making my life hell. I just wanted everything to be over with, and I felt a hysterectomy was the best route to go.

I immediately went home and started to research the process and procedure of a hysterectomy. What it entailed, what the after effects would be, everything. I really started feeling like this was the best option for me. And that was when I hit my biggest brick wall. At my next doctors visit, I proposed the idea of a hysterectomy. He agreed that it might be the best way to help me, however, he would not do it. I was a little baffled at first, wondering why if he felt this was the best option for me, he didn't just go ahead and start the process to get things underway. He then told me that he could not perform a hysterectomy because I was too young and had no children. By this time, I was 27 years old, and had pretty much accepted the fact that I was never going to have children, due to all of the problems that I had. And to be quite honest, I didn't even want children. I even stressed that point to my doctor. He told me it didn't matter. That no doctor or hospital was going to perform an irreversible procedure on such a young women that did not have any children. What if I changed my mind about wanting children? The redundancy of that statement had me literally laughing out loud. With all of the problems that I had, I was never going to conceive a child anyway! That was when he told me something that, for lack of a better term, completely rocked my world. He told me the only way I would be able to convince a hospital board to grant me the permission to have a hysterectomy, would be to have my husband, if I were married, sign a waiver giving me consent to have the procedure performed!

I was completely appalled! It was my body, and here was a man telling me that I would have to have another man tell me what I was allowed to do with it! Now I know what some of you may be thinking. Why didn't I just go to another doctor, and get another opinion and see what they said. Well I did just that. Same scenario each time around. I'm too young, not married, and have no children. Regardless of the fact that it is my body, and I am the one having to suffer from all of this, it is still not my decision to make. I could not believe that in a modern society such as ours, I was being told something like this. I have no rights to make decisions concerning my own body.

So now here we are today. I am going to be 29 in a few months, and yes, I still contain all of the organs I was born with. My problems however, have gotten worse. I now have a menstrual cycle perhaps 4 or 5 times a year. Whenever I do, I usually end up in bed for 2-3 days at least. I also have endometrial growths around my kidneys, which causes me to often suffer from intense kidney infections. Oh, and of course, I still have no children. And I know, that unless there are some major changes in hospital policies and protocol, I have another 10 years or so to look forward to all of this, before they will really consider giving me a hysterectomy.

Approximately 5.5 million women in North America alone suffer from Endometriosis. Does it help me to know that I am not the only one going through this? Not really. It saddens me that so many of us are going to be made to suffer from it. It should be our decision as to whether or not we choose to have a hysterectomy. It is our body, and it should be our choice. Women of today need to band together, as we have so often in the past to fight for our rights, and fight now for the right to make choices concerning our own bodies.