Lena Dunham is known for many things, perhaps most of all for being open. So it's no surprise that she's been taking us behind-the-scenes of her serious reproductive health problems since 2014. And in a recent interview for New York Magazine's The Cut, the Girls creator shared even more details from her hysterectomy and subsequent surgeries to combat her endometriosis.
“The doctor said he’d never seen a uterus as misshapen as mine,” Dunham tells The Cut. Prior, she had multiple operations to remove lesions and repair ruptured ovarian cysts. Towards the end of her time working on Girls, her health took a turn for the worst. She was only able to get around using a walker and, and after losing 30 pounds and fainting at the Met Gala, she was diagnosed with fibromyalgia and a mixed connective-tissue disorder, she shares.
AdvertisementADVERTISEMENT
"Lonely" and "medicated," is how she describes the time in her life, and despite pushback from her doctors, she elected to go through with an elective hysterectomy at 31 in an attempt to relieve her endometriosis pain. She remembers feeling vindicated after her surgeon told her that her case was one of the worst he's seen.
Dunham, who didn't have time to freeze her eggs, says, "It’s really amazing, in points of extreme distress, how things you thought were nonnegotiable start to become negotiable... I thought I would do anything to have a kid naturally. Turned out that wasn’t true."
While Dunham is frequently criticised for over sharing, we're sure many women with similar health issues are grateful for her honesty when it comes to dealing with endometriosis.