I suppose it’s fair to say that a woman’s monthly bipolar event ain’t all roses and chocolate for the SO either.
ducks behind couch
Not that it’s a solution to some of the extreme problems in this thread, but I haven’t seen hide nor hair of Aunt Flo since I met my new best friend, Mirena. (I think it’s been, what, two and a half years now?)
You are simply not going to find an OB/GYN willing to perform a hysterectomy on a woman under, say 35, if the reason is anything short of “going to die”. Part of this is because of our litigious society. Young women have a hysterectomy, swearing up and down that they don’t want children, they understand the consequences, and then five years later, sue the doctor because they can’t form the babbies anymore, and somebody’s got to pay.
And there is a wide streak of paternalism even with female OB/GYNs where they just don’t take what we say very seriously. Our symptoms are downplayed, we’re told it’s all part of being a woman, that we should toughen up, or that the treatment we’re prescribed - birth control pills, maybe an IUD, rarely a surgical procedure - has done the job for every other woman in the history of women and it’ll work for us too.
I don’t know what it is. In my teens and twenties, pretty much every gynecologist I saw was competent, sympathetic, and helpful. Starting in my thirties, asking one for prescription painkillers for gynecological pain, would get a terrified “deer in the headlights” look, and complaints of violent mood swings, abnormally heavy periods, painful cramping, and migraines were ignored - and this was by a doctor who otherwise provided excellent care.
Well, to be fair, there are short and long term risks to hysterectomy, even the fancy shmancy less invasive kinds. Shortened life expectency, increased cardiovascular disease, increased osteoporosis and increased clinical depression aren’t exactly something to sneeze at. And, speaking of sneezing, increased incontinence. And sexual dysfunction, low or no libido, hot flashes, vaginal dryness, tearing and infections and all those other fun menopausal symptoms. That’s not to mention the short term risks and side effects of many hysterectomies, like 4-8 weeks of not lifting more than 5 pounds, no sex, infection risk, risk of dying from the anesthesia, etc.
Yes, there’s an annoying amount of paternalism present in the decision making process, but they’re not entirely being jerks when they try to dissuade you from having an elective hysterectomy.
Having a uterus removed is a major procedure and there are some good long-term reasons not to do it; there aren’t many doctors who will simply do that on request just cuz you want it. Most won’t have a problem with it if the uterus is diseased and less invasive options aren’t appropriate. Good luck applebetty, I hope you get a good solution to your lifelong issues!
But don’t get me started on the difficulties of young women trying to get a tubal ligation, though. There’s where the “but you might change your mind and want a baaaaaabeeeee someday” crap gets pulled. You never hear about men getting refused a vasectomy for Pete’s sake.
I know this is a commonly cited reason, but is there actual evidence of this happening? At least to a significant degree? I can’t imagine anyone actually winning this kind of lawsuit.
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It doesn’t actually hurt. You’re just saying it does because you’re a woman and women can’t take pain and are constantly looking for drama and attention. You should try some nice light exercise and a hot water bottle.
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Who do you think you are, having ideas about how your problems should be treated? You are automatically wrong.
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You’ll never be fulfilled without [more] baybeeesss!!! Go have a baby. Then you’ll be so fulfilled that you’ll stop needing to make up all this ‘pain’ drama stuff!
In this country, anyway, that seems to change the instant you hit menopause. As far as I can tell, doctors will then yank out all your girl bits for any reason or none, on the grounds that they’re not doing you any good, and who cares if you would actually like to keep your female equipment? You’re not an actual woman any more anyway.
I’ve been lucky in that my uterus has never actually done anything noticeably bad to me, touch wood, and my GP is pretty great. But I’ve heard plenty of friends’ stories.
Wait, what? Most of those things sound like they’d result from a change in hormone levels. I’m nothing medical, but the hormones come from the ovaries, not the uterus, no? So why would removing the uterus affect them?
The endometrium also makes hormones.
Cool. This week’s Thing I Truly Did Not Know. Thanks.
As I’m reading this thread, a Mirena commercial came on the TV. I gotta look into this stuff. The pill has kept my formerly nine to ten day long periods under control, but the trade-off is a crippling migraine every God-damned month.
Gran had a hysterectomy because of fibroids, Mom had the ablation done before resorting to the surgery.
Applebetty, that was an awesome rant, I will donate my Q-sized crochet hook to your cause if you don’t already have one!
Go ahead and scrap your uterus! Just please don’t touch your hooterus! 
It’s not just women. I tried to get a vasectomy in my early 20s, not having children and never having been married. I already knew I didn’t want kids. I was turned down by several doctors and gave up. I didn’t have the surgery until I was 35, still never having been married or had kids. I’m still kind of pissed about it, mostly at myself for not having continued the search for a doc who would do it the first time I tried.
Others have answered, but that’s not going to stop me.
Many (not all) doctors believe that M.D. means Medical Deity, and that they know what’s best for the patient, and they also think that they know just how a patient is going to feel in the future. “Paternalistic attitude” doesn’t even begin to describe this attitude. The doctors have guidelines, too…no hysterectomies unless a woman is at least 40 with at least 4 kids was the rule back when I was trying to get a hysterectomy. They made exceptions for uterine cancer, and that’s about it. In my mother’s day, though, there was a big problem with doctors yanking out uteruses left and right among middle aged women with no real complaint. See, this surgery was fairly low risk, just about every woman has a uterus, and the docs were making a lot of money by recommending and performing hysterectomies, even though the women didn’t particularly want to part with their uteruses. But the doctors knew better than silly women. Anyway, that’s part of the reason why the rules and guidelines were put into place.
I had my tubes tied when I was about 24. I was running from one doctor to another, and all of them told me that they didn’t do tubals on women who were under 40, unless they had more than four kids. I’d had some pretty serious pregnancy complications, and I’d managed to get pregnant 3 times in 2 years (2 miscarriages, one live birth), once on the Pill, once using foam and condoms together, and once with an IUD in me. I was told that the odds of getting pregnant again were astronomical, and that I must have been using the birth control improperly, although how I was supposed to be using an IUD improperly, I don’t know. At any rate, I finally got three psychiatrists to agree that 1) I knew that getting a tubal would mean that I couldn’t get pregnant 2) that I really, really didn’t want any more kids and 3) that I’d quite likely commit suicide if I found myself pregnant again. So, I was finally able to get my tubes tied, but it involved going to many, many doctors. It’s not just a simple case of finding a doctor who will do what you want, because most doctors won’t do it unless there are very special circumstances.
Dear god, that was a thing of beauty. I’ve never seen a better string of expletives. THANK YOU.
'cept when it pretty much cures the incontinence, as in my mother’s case.
You have any idea how NICE it is to know that when I take her for a drive, she will NOT be smelling like shit and/or pee after a while? And that’s just my opinion, I’m not the one who used to go to the bathroom so often you’d think she had a permanent UTI. (The shit side had gotten a previous treatment which had regulated her a lot, but she still suffered from mild incontinence on that end; not any more).
Oh HELL to the YES! Preach on, sister. Motherfucking useless-ass, space-wasting, blood-spilling, agony-producing, would-be assassin of a god-damned organ. Get rid of that traitorous anemia-machine with a quickness!
Maybe if your Dr needs convincing, you could show him/her this thread.
I got mine yanked when I was 38, after about 7 years of increasingly torrential flow due to fibroids. Years of packing two-at-once extra super heavy plus plugs at a time, with a giant mattress of a pad to absorb the overflow which usually soaked through in about a half hour. Not to mention the anemia, holy shit. I got 2 units of blood transfused post-op and finally felt like a human being for the first time in a long time.
Seriously, who the fuck needs to put up with that shit?
Incidentally I’m a one-ovary gal, works fine so far - no HRT or anything necessary.
Semi off-topic but good for a laugh and might come in handy in the future:
The day after my surgery, my doctor came to check things out and remove the packing. So, I’m lying there in the bed (high as shit on pain drugs) as she is fiddling around between my legs and begins to draw out - hand over hand, like a magician producing the long chain of scarves - yards and yards of wretched bloody gauze.
I spontaneously broke out with “The Sabre Dance” and asked her if there would be a bouquet of flowers or a dove coming out next.
She started laughing so hard that she had to lean down and lean her head and arms on the bed to keep from falling down. 
Don’t let that bitch-ass uterus win! Show her who’s boss!
My personal uterus ownership has been largely uneventful, with the notable exception of the one time that it was done with accessories for the season and twisted off one of the ovaries out of spite. Man, ovarian torsions HURT. But aside from that: no cramping, light blood flow, fairly predictable 26-day cycle, etc. A model for all uteruses.
However, this leads to an odd complication. As I’m getting older, I’m experiencing more PMS symptoms, but only intermittently and only some symptoms for any given cycle. So, maybe 3-4 times a year, I’ll have two days of OMG I HATE MYSELF SO MUCH AND I ALWAYS HAVE AND I ALWAYS WILL or OMG I AM GOING TO EAT EVERYTHING IN SIGHT AND IF YOU GET IN MY WAY I WILL KILL AND EAT YOU TOO or OMG ALL OF MY JOINTS ARE SO SWOLLEN I CAN’T BEND MY KNEES ANY LONGER. But never all at once, and each one happens so infrequently that I have no idea what’s going on or why I’m so messed up and miserable. I’ll feel like my ongoing problems with depression, arthritis, or appetite control have suddenly spiked out of control and taken a permanent turn for the worse. And then I suddenly start bleeding, and it’s like a light bulb lit up: Oh! It’s PMS! It will get better!!!
I mean, I’d rather these be rare problems than common ones, but their rarity means that I’m not prepared for them, and each time they throw me for a loop.
If my wife was suffering like this month in and month out and we researched and wanted the surgery and the doctor said no, hell we are both going in and kicking 100% of his ass. How dare he say no. Again, he’s my employee.
I’m on implants and was on Depo for years before that, so I can laugh at these brilliant posts and only have vague, fearful, nagging memories of going through this myself.
When they took my Depo away (Osteoarthitis runs in the family) I was literally shaking with fear in the Doc’s office until she could give me an alternative that meant I wouldn’t be going back to the pain.
I love the implants, two little sticks of joy.
orderfire, you are my new hero!