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Dunham reveals she had hysterectomy to end pain

US actress Lena Dunham, who created and starred in the hit TV series Girls, has revealed that she had a hysterectomy at 31 following a decade-long battle with endometriosis.

In an essay for Vogue, she said she checked herself into hospital to demand her uterus and cervix be removed when the pain from the uterine condition became "unbearable".

Endometriosis sees tissue that normally lines the inside of a woman's uterus grow on the outside instead.

"In addition to endometrial disease, an odd humplike protrusion and a septum running down the middle, I have had retrograde bleeding, a.k.a my period running in reverse, so my stomach is full of blood," she wrote.

Her battle with the condition has been well-documented. She was rushed to hospital last May after falling ill at the Met Gala. In March 2016, she also underwent surgery when an ovarian cyst ruptured.

The hysterectomy, which was conducted in the fall, was her ninth surgical procedure, and has left her in mourning for the children she will not be able to carry.

But the essay ended on a more positive note as Dunham thought of alternative ways to have children.

"I may have felt choiceless before, but I know I have choices now. Soon I will start exploring whether my ovaries, which remain someplace inside me in that vast cavern of organs and scar tissue, have eggs," she wrote.

- AFP

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