Actress Lena Dunham has had her cervix and uterus removed in a total hysterectomy.
The former Girls star underwent the surgical procedure after suffering with endometriosis for almost two decades. The medical condition causes intense pain as the uterine lining tissue grows outside the uterus.
Lena went public with her endometriosis diagnosis in her Lenny Letter online forum in 2015, and now the 31-year-old has revealed all about her latest move to deal with the illness in a new essay for American Vogue.
Revealing she awoke from the surgery to learn her inner organs were in a worse condition than she had imagined, the actress writes: "In addition to endometrial disease, an odd hump-like protrusion and a septum running down the middle, I have retrograde bleeding, a.k.a. my period running in reverse so that my stomach is full of blood. My ovary has settled in on the muscles around the sacral nerves in my back that allow us to walk. Let’s please not even talk about my uterine lining."
She added: "The only beautiful detail is that the organ - which is meant to be shaped like a light bulb - was shaped like a heart.”
Lena, who recently split from longtime boyfriend Jack Antonoff, admitted she finally made the decision to undergo a hysterectomy after "years of complex surgeries measuring in the double digits" and attempts to treat endometriosis with alternative healing methods, such as yoga, "pelvic floor therapy, massage therapy, pain therapy, color therapy, acupuncture".
Although the star no longer has the same reproductive makeup, she is determined to have kids and is now exploring her options, biologically or otherwise, for making that happen.
“I may have felt choiceless before, but I know I have choices now,” she added. “Soon I’ll start exploring whether my ovaries, which remain someplace inside me in that vast cavern of organs and scar tissue, have eggs. Adoption is a thrilling truth I’ll pursue with all my might."
