Fibroids: The Group Chat Topic Nobody Started

Apparently up to 80% of women will develop a fibroid by the time they turn 50. I only found this out a few weeks ago, at age 37, which feels like exactly how most of us learn anything about our own bodies.

Bethenny Frankel talked about hers on Real Housewives years ago: the heavy bleeding, the exhaustion she mistook for burnout, a doctor who casually offered her a hysterectomy like it was the only available option. Lupita Nyong'o's fibroids came back too, and she's now up to 77 of them, still being offered the same two options: surgery or living with the pain. Two very different women, same script, symptoms brushed off as a heavy period or a stubborn UTI, until someone finally calls it what it is.

Nearly half of the 600,000 hysterectomies performed in the U.S. every year are done for fibroids, and close to 60% of those women never tried a less invasive option first.

I can't help but think about all the women who had their uterus removed without ever knowing what their other options were. And then again, I just interviewed Dr. Cheruba Prabakar, aka "The Fibroid Doc," who told me about a young patient who was just done. Done with the pain, done with the discomfort, certain she didn't want kids, and wanted the ability to make that choice for herself.

Newer treatments exist, but that's not really the point. The point is a hysterectomy shouldn't be the only door someone's shown, and it shouldn't be a door that's closed to her either.

It should just be a choice — hers.