Fibroid prolapse with uterus prolapse

What are your symptoms, Maybelle, and how old are you?

Is the fibroid coming from inside your cervix? How much past the vaginal opening can you push your uterus? Does the fibroid feel hard or soft and squishy?

Isn't fibroid removal pretty rare due the the vascular nature of how it attaches and the risks of bleeding? This might be why they want to take your uterus as well. What are the chances of it being cancerous? Is there any reason why they think it may be? I haven't heard cancer mentioned with the women I have worked with who have fibroids. Sounds like a negative biopsy would be reassuring; what is the point of doing a biopsy if they are going to ignore the results?! Sorry I cannot be more help, maybelle55.

Hi Maybelle

What do you mean when you say you are three years into menopause?

Heavy bleeding is usually, as far as I know, the last big hurdle of perimenopause, then the periods get further apart and less profuse, and generally more comfortable before tailing off altogether. I will be surprised if you are still having periods of any significance in 12 months time. You are so close! Fibroids will shrink at menopause. I guess that is because the uterus shrinks, so they don't have so much blood supply.

Yes, some doctors see a mass and want to amputate it, taking as much as they need to amputate of the organ in question at the same time, kind of like trimming a carcase if you are butcher. Gross comparison I know, but it is very 'lower level' and shortsighted thinking, if you ask me. Masses are not necessarily malignant, though I guess even a newborn baby is potentially a source of malignancy if you want to think like that! Some doctors would rather see it gone, rather than watch it and wait. They also talk about pre-cancerous cells. Many a woman has lost a uterus because the abnormal cells found *might* have turned cancerous. Many, many women who have fibroids in perimenopause find that they no longer have them five years after menopause, or they are so small as to not cause any problems.

It is a little bit like saying that all plants start off as tiny seeds that grow into tiny seedlings. Some grow very tall and end up being trees that fall over in storms and squash houses. Therefore you should destroy all seeds and seedlings that come up in your yard, because if you don't one will grow really big and kill you. Everyone has seedlings in their garden, whether planted or weeds. Very few people die from having a tree crash on their house.

Yes, I am being simplistic but I think you need to find out more about what is in your uterus before you let anyone near it with a scalpel. Isn't that what they do with an hysteroscopy? And do biopsies while they are in there?

The HERS Foundation, www.hers.org, has a very good list of questions to ask your doctor before consenting to hysterectomy. You must find out as much about this mass as you can, and if that means the doctor has to go back to school to learn first, it will be Win/Win all around if he learns something he didn't know before.

Just don't let him scare you, even if he is scared himself, which it sounds like he is. If you don't have faith in him, you are with the wrong doctor. I suggest that you find a new one. We are talking here about the only body you have!! You can't just go and get a new one if it doesn't work out, or the fibroid proves to be harmless after they remove your uterus.

I don't know much about fibroids, other than that they are an outgrowth from the muscle tissue of the body of the uterus and that they grow slowly, then start shrinking around menopause. They can cause heavy bleeding and considerable discomfort. However, if the uterus prolapses it would seem logical to me that a fibroid attached to it would prolapse as well. I don't think your situation would be *that* unusual.

I would be researching, watching and waiting, putting some more questions to the doctor, and putting most of my energy into perfecting Wholewoman Posture, appropriate clothing, a diet that ensures that you don't have excess in your pelvic cavity to cause pressure on it, and amending the way you use your body in every day life to give your uterus the best chance possible of staying inside your vagina and keeping its little finger-shaped friend in there as well.

I am sure we can help you do this in the short term, while your doctor gets his a*** into gear and starts working for you, rather than trying to destroy your body.

Are there any older Wholewomen out there who have had fibroids that have shrunk away to nothing???

Best of luck. Keep calling back.

Louise

Hi Maybelle,

The uterus grows all sorts of barbs and horns - most of them around this time of life. I had a similar experience in 2005. Felt a soft little bulb at my cervical os and watched it grow (quickly) into a large, teardrop-shaped polyp. I had it removed - was going to tie a string around it and strangle it until it fell off - but didn’t have the stomach for it. A year or two later it was back, this time just the stalk and not the bulbous part. It was like a little tongue sticking out of my cervix - a very bad joke I thought the Universe had played on me! I had no interest in having it removed, so just watched to see what it would do.

I did a lot of experimenting in trying to treat my LS symptoms and one day took a strong sitzbath of chaparral and pennyroyal. That night I had the amazing experience of my menopausal uterus purging. During the night gobs of clear goo were expelled - some sort of build up of my endometrium (if it is still called that in a non-cycling woman) no doubt.

I was intrigued and continued with pennyroyal sitzbaths for the next few days. Pennyroyal is known to cause shedding of the endometrium - but I wondered if its progesterone-like qualities would help my LS. One day - and this is recorded here in our forums - after weeing I looked into the toilet and saw what looked like a bit of raw hamburger. I thought someone had thrown something in there earlier and didn’t think much about it. I didn’t know what to think when I went again and saw another piece of hamburger there. Only when I took a bath did I realize that MY POLYP FELL OFF!!!

Another pertinent story: In 2008 during the filming of FAFP, a very old woman called the WWC asking about information on prolapse. I talked to her for a while and she told me she had a large fibroid during the 1960s and was told by a native healer to drink chaparral tea. She took the advice and her fibroid completely disappeared. She said “You know, you can’t get it anymore. They took it all off the shelves!”

Well, that was true during the nineties because there were two isolated cases of liver toxicity in people who were taking chaparral “pills” along with other drugs. This was also the time period that pharmaceutical cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase inhibitors were being developed - from the prototype of chaparral. A major natural health regulatory body demanded chaparral be put back on the shelves, which it was. However, both pennyroyal and chaparral continue to have very bad reputations. Both are extremely powerful herbs used since antiquity.

Science is just now putting together the puzzle of estrogen metabolite-dependent disease, which fibroids probably fall into. If yours is a true fibroid - it may look red on the outside, but cut open they are pearly white with a concentric whorl design - like a sea shell gone mad. The brain spins similar protein material in Alzheimer’s disease. Researchers say the cells start to go into their normal cycle, then get interrupted and begin spinning out chaotic material.

These are simply Old Wives Tales. I cannot offer you more than that.

Science is such a holy institution. At its beginning, a small group of men dedicated to defining “truth” as something that could be demonstrated and reproduced, actually had to hide from a greater society that would have killed them for their beliefs. But they persevered, determined to replace a world of soothsayers and palm-readers with actual fact. Unfortunately, the medical/pharmaceutical system is now basically divorced from the true scientific method.

How fortuitous that we have lived long enough to witness a convergence of science and Old Wives.

Hope you find your way, dear Maybelle.

Christine

Hi Maybelle

Thanks for that information. Sorry about the rant in my last post. It is just so frustrating to hear all these 'scientific' facts that Christine describes, and the power of fear as a motivator.

Thanks for clarifying your situation. I am so glad you are going on a quest to find a fibroid clinic. I hope that you can find one that has a conservative approach. Once again the HERS Foundation might be a useful resource in this quest.

Now I know that you are three years postmenopause I can see why you are concerned that both the uterus and the fibroid are large. You seem to be taking quite a thorough approach, and are well aware that you do not want to lose your uterus unnecessarily. I am sure you will find the right path. Both POP and prolapse are common features of this stage of our lives and this site is becoming a common stopping off point for women with all three factors.

Please let us know how you go, whatever the outcome, for the sake of others coming along the path after you. All women need as much real life information as they can get, pleasant or not. It is all very well for me to say, "Don't worry - the fibroid is probably harmless." It is not me trying to live with it, and live with the possibility that it is not OK. Fibroids are abnormal tissue. All the malignant possibilities need to be appropriately investigated.

Dr Christiane Northrup's work might also be useful as a resource. She talks about making fibroids disappear in her book, Women's Bodies Women's Wisdom

Good luck.

Meanwhile, get your posture organised! :-)

Louise

Maybelle, I hope my ramblings were taken as the pure stream-of-consciousness that they were. We never have any way of knowing what an individual woman is truly dealing with and therefore always speak in general terms. Your fatigue and discharge are symptoms that should be followed up with.

Louise, I think your instinctual first post contained some very good points. Regardless of what Maybelle’s actual condition might be, the fact remains that she should be offered much deeper diagnostics. Hysteroscopy should be performed, if possible, and several biopsies taken. It is irrefutable that uterine preservation is simply not a priority in our society.

I have had two experiences - one pre-menopausally and one post - of my uterus purging. I am a firm believer that purging is one of its functions, but that we no longer have knowledge of the substances that cause such action. Yet, I have never seen this mentioned anywhere in the literature. Burning (ablation), scraping (D&C), and extirpating surgery (hysterectomy) are the only ways the practice knows how to respond to abnormality of the uterine interior.

There is great need for naturopathic gynecology.

Be well, Maybelle.

Christine

This is simply amazing Maybelle! Here we all are, working on resolving our prolapses and you have this crazy growth exiting your body. It makes for a really strange visual. I know what it is like to be told "I'm so sorry we need to remove this right now" and it is scary. I am so glad you went in for a second opinion. I have never heard of a prolapsed fibroid before and imagine there is not much out there in the medical literature about it. I hope that you are able to take care of yourself and not have to suffer with this much longer.
You are a strong woman on this really tough journey. Please be sure to tell us what you learn along the way.