Dear Diary,
Women are being blamed for fibroids. What in the actual ef? Why has society gotten so cruel, so fast? What’s next? Are we getting blamed for cervical cancer too?
Recently, singer Irene Ntale posted one of those not-so-cryptic, heavy, only-I-know-what-I’m-going-through kind of updates: ‘4 weeks, 4 days post-op. 30 removed, vertical incision.’
She had had an open abdominal myomectomy – the hardcore surgery that plucks out fibroids while keeping the womb intact. Thirty fibroids! And some dwanzie in the comment section actually typed: ‘An idle uterus is a fibroid workshop.’
I have no words.
This dragged me back through three of my own emotionally draining medical chapters.
It started with my endometrial polyps diagnosis. I was basically the biblical woman bleeding for 12 years, except mine ran 40 continuous days at a time, for three years, complete with violent cramps. In my infinite foolishness, I convinced myself my period was just making up for lost time. Throughout my 20s, I would go up to six months, sometimes nine, without a period.
And no, I was not sexually active. I was a virgin (the original kind, not the ones we reclaim after a long dry spell).
My missing periods were always blamed on my tomboy tendencies. Apparently, my cargo pants and oversized tees had directly sabotaged my reproductive system.
So there I was, sitting with this respected bespectacled gynaecologist [note to self: never trust a gyn that wears spects] who sent me for an ultrasound. The radiologist called him into the dark room to witness history: polyps so massive they broke local records. To measure them, they needed an invasive internal scan. Durex on the wand (hopefully Durex, not those questionable pink ones UNFPA drops in public loos), knees up, and prodding that lasted longer than an episode of Game of Thrones.
Turns out my period was not making up for lost time at all. Squatters had taken land titles in my uterus and declared themselves corporate tummy-lords. The doctor bluntly informed me I could not conceive if I tried, because my organ was essentially cosplaying a pregnancy. That explained the non-stop crime scene in my panties.
Back in the luxury of his office, results in hand, this grown man looked me dead in the eye and asked me to confess: had I aborted? According to him, three years of brutal bleeding, debilitating cramps, and uterus squatters were best explained by a secret abortion.
‘I can help you,’ he offered.
‘Like hell you will!’ I snapped, snatching my scans and storming out, completely murderous. This man had just watched a wand probe my internal organs. He looked deep into my abyss. Yet his brain still defaulted to ‘must be a fallen woman!’
With the abysmal self-esteem I carried from bleeding every single day, how was I supposed to pull off the sex required for the pregnancy he thought I terminated? At that point, a nine-month pregnancy would have been a luxury vacation from the bleeding.
Oh, but my body was not done sabotaging me! Next came the acne attack.
Suddenly I was being interrogated about pimples, their cousins the whiteheads, and blackheads. The hyperpigmentation. My face was a battleground, and the street diagnostic team, aka word-cutters, blamed kizigo. I was barely lucky they did not call it Sida. Or maybe they
did.
I dragged myself to an upmarket, Instagram-aesthetic, flashy skin clinic at a mall on Acacia Avenue that I will not name. The crazy expensive kind that offers laser hair removal and moral superiority.
Long story short: zero tests, zero patch tests, a few generic questions, and I was slapped with a prescription for doxycycline -antibiotics so nuclear I started hallucinating. They added a litany of topical creams that either bleached me like a cheap Carolite or triggered massive allergic facial swelling. To cap it off, I was handed Clabane soap, because apparently washing with regular soap was my main cardinal sin.
It took a sharp pharmacist in Lira to look at that prescription, four months in, and tell me to bin the entire routine and find a gyn. Me and gynaecologists? ‘We have a thing… goin’ on!’
The verdict? Hormonal acne courtesy of my ovaries. Polycystic Ovary Syndrome, aka PCOS.
Simply put, my body makes extra male hormones called androgens, which can stop eggs from releasing regularly. It seems every single problem in my life traces directly back to my loins. I genuinely need to prioritise orgasms in my next life.
What am I even going on about? Women are battling absolute hell out here.
Women have fibroids the size of a full-term embryo, and it is not because they are not popping out babies like rabbits. Women are not childless because they are ‘too posh to push.’ They are fighting conditions.
Women are barely surviving miscarriages. They are burning millions on IVF only for the embryo to refuse to attach. They are turning to surrogates because their uteruses are rejecting babies. And you rarely hear about any of this because women carry these battles silently at 3am.
Stop blaming women for biological malfunctions.
Fibroids are not the cosmic punishment for a uterus that failed to win Employee of the Month. A womb does not open a fibroid manufacturing plant just because it is idle and disorderly. Science already broke it down: high estrogen levels, genetics, age, ethnicity, and even basic Vitamin D deficiency drive these growths. Pregnancy might lower the risk for some, but a baby is not a medical vaccine against fibroids.
Let us do better. Be kind out there!