Hi. Thanks so much for posting your experiences. They have been a source of inspiration and comfort to me. So much stuff on the web involves women saying that all treatments for fibroids are bad other than eating organic arugula and praying. Well, this isn't helping me, and in the past six months, three times I've been in the ER for sudden, life-threatening blood loss.

So even though all my life I've been a strong practitioner of holistic and balanced lifestyles, I'm going the heavy metal route--a partial hysto--even though I could never imagine doing that before.

I was intrigued by this regrets thread. I'm child free, I'm the quintessential Auntie, I never wanted to add more humans to the planet, I always took care of the ones already here.

I'm really looking forward to this hysterectomy! I feel like I must be some sort of Secret Sisterhood heretic. But I feel like I've had a real drain on my energy, creativity, and flow for a long time, and wasn't aware of it, because it came on so gradually. I have always been hugely physically active, greatly energetic...and slowly I slowed down. Never noticed it. Thought it was aging, thought it was menopause, all that. Just as you said.

If I could go this minute into surgery, I would. I'm jubilant to think that when this is all over, hopefully in 5-6 months, I will be able to start reclaiming my empowered beautiful body. I have always been so strong, though also accepting of my own vulnerabilities. But in this case I feel like I didn't get the health information I needed to be VIGILANT.

I was resistant to hysterectomy at first, hoping after my first hemorrhage (four pints) to use holistic methods. Then after another episode like that, then another of five pints...all in six months...I'm feeling like, I've had enough. I feel blessed and lucky to live in a nation where such medical care is possible. I feel blessed and lucky to have HEALTH INSURANCE, which so many women lack.

I wish I had known to look for this syndrome earlier in my life. GYNs would find small fibroid masses in my annual pelvics, but never offered me education or information warning me of what could happen. That it could turn into something life-threatening. I take responsibility for my health, for living well...and this is a really frustrating thing. I hear constantly about breast cancer, about Alzheimer's, about all sorts of things that happen to women A LOT LESS FREQUENTLY than these massive fibroids, massive uteri, and the complications of that.

My anemia is one reason for the delay in surgery--my hematocrit was 20, my ferritin under 2. I'm a hard worker, a strong woman, and kept pushing past fatigue. It didn't feel all that bad.

Why didn't someone tell me to look for signs of perimenopausal anemia? Why wasn't I made aware of this? Why didn't someone tell me that it wasn't normal, to graduate from maxi pads to super maxis to long super maxis to overnight maxis, and saturate overnight maxis every hour? Why didn't someone give me an empirical set of standards, so I could say, hey, wait: this isn't normal, this is getting dangerous?

We hear constantly about boner drugs for men, about mammograms, etc. But I'm willing to bet that these enlarged uterus and big fibroid issues cost this nation more in productivity and outright costs. And cost us women far more anguish, frustration, and struggle. I am so grateful that I could afford to retire early from my first career; so many women have to work while enduring this. I'll be able to go into my second career, at 50 or 51 or 52, without this drain on my energy!

By the way, my uterus is the size of a six-month pregnancy. I have three fibroids over 10 centimeters. How long has this been draining me, without my awareness? Or me doing the Woman Thing, of pushing past the fatigue by helping others.

One last thing, and I hope this doesn't cause offense, because I offer it in love. I never thought of my uterus in a magical way. I never intended to have kids, I always had plenty of lost little children to care for. So when I bleed from the uterus, for example (periods) I always felt it was just blood. I don't have a lot of magical thinking around reproduction. I've always felt the magic was in my heart, in my soul, not in my uterus. So mostly I am grateful to my uterus for having safely captured the effects of hyperestrogenicity in this way. What else might have the estrogen have done, if my uterus hadn't been standing guard with its powerful muscles, protecting me, so that it might help me give birth to a new life for me, a new career, and more decades of being the "best Auntie ever"?

Thank you, uterus, and good bye! I am so grateful to evolution for you!!!!

Denny