Venus Williams' Painful Journey with Uterine Fibroids
On the July 3 episode of the "NBC Morning Show," tennis icon Venus Williams, known for fighting for gender pay equality, shared with NBC News' Zinhle Essamuah that she suffered pain so intense it left her “laying on the floor in the locker room” during a past Wimbledon tournament, according to People.
Venus Williams revealed that she has struggled with fibroids for some time--sharing that her symptoms were extreme pain. “You know, getting so much in pain that maybe you throw up. Or you can’t get off the ground … I missed practices because of that. Just, you know, hugging the toilet.”
In 2011, Williams was diagnosed with Sjögren’s syndrome. Williams thought that her pain on the locker room floor was caused by her Sjögren’s, because the syndrome causes fatigue and swollen joints. “I live with an autoimmune disease. So I thought maybe it was autoimmune anemia or something like that. But really it was what I was dealing with inside, which was fibroids.”
Benign but painful tumors in the uterus and fibroids can lead to debilitating symptoms like bladder issues, longer than normal periods, and pelvic pain, according to NYU Langone Health’s Center for Fibroid Care.
Initially, Williams’ symptoms were dismissed by doctors, she shared. “One doctor told me [when I was 37] … this is a part of aging. This is normal.” Another doctor suggested a life-altering hysterectomy. “I've never been so sad in my life," she recalled. "I had never been running to have kids but I always wanted to have a choice and to have that taken away is just frightening.”
Williams ultimately found a doctor who performed a myomectomy a year ago, Dr. Tara Shirazian from NYU’s Langone Health's Center for Fibroid Care, according to People. She underwent a procedure that removed the fibroids and kept the uterus intact. Williams shared that the fibroids could be “big like an orange.”
Follow this link for more information on Common Reproductive Health Concerns for Women and uterine fibroids.
