“Women’s health, aside from cancer, is not on the radar, not part of the conversation.” — Dr Nicholas Leyland, Professor and Chair of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, The Michael G DeGroote School of Medicine, McMaster University If you’re a woman, you probably have fibroids — non-cancerous growths of the uterus, ranging in size from seedling to cantaloupe, that often appear during childbearing years. By age 50, as many as three out of four of women have fibroids and a third are symptomatic due to bleeding or the effect of the mass on surrounding tissue.
“It’s fibroids, not thyroid!” Actor/ESL Teacher Natasha Fiorino
Most women have fibroids, yet no one has heard of them and so when Natasha Fiorino drummed up the courage to tell her boss about why she would need some time off, it became like that telephone game we played as kids: word got around and people thought she had a thyroid problem. But Natasha’s boss understood and supported her, proving that talking about fibroids (not thyroid) works.
Fibroids are the leading cause of hysterectomy — the second most common surgery performed on women (after Caesarian section). Over half a million hysterectomies are performed each year in North America. One out [...] continue the story