Porsha Williams is opening up about the partial hysterectomy surgery she underwent earlier this year. The Real Housewives of Atlanta mom of one recently revealed that she had to get emergency surgery after doctors found 21 fibroids in her uterus and is sharing more details about it.
In an essay penned for Glamour, published on Sept. 18, Porsha revealed that she had struggled with fibroids throughout her 30s before a doctor found over “15 large fibroids in my uterus, plus endometriosis, and another diagnosis involving the uterine lining.” Due to the severity of the fibroids, the doctor told the mom of one that she needed an emergency partial hysterectomy, “so I’d keep my ovaries and lose only the uterus,” she wrote.
“I woke up after the surgery and thought a part of me was gone. Fibroids aren’t something we usually talk about as a women and neither are hysterectomies. There’s a stigma to it, as if you’re somehow less of a woman without your uterus,” she wrote. “I was 45 and headed to perimenopause and I didn’t want anything throwing my hormones off. On top of it all was the pain of knowing I’d never carry another child and that I couldn’t even have eggs retrieved for a surrogate. That door had officially closed.”
When was Porsha Williams diagnosed with fibroids?
Porsha was first diagnosed with fibroids in her late 20s, as she explained to Gayle King on CBS Mornings. “It was time for me to start trying to have kids. And I was having fertility issues, and I was like, ‘OK, what’s really happening?’ And I thought it was just something other than fibroids. I had never even really heard of them or thought of them, and then I went to the doctor, and I was pregnant,” she said in a clip posted to Instagram. “And she said, ‘There’s a fibroid there.'”
What are fibroids?
Fibroids are growths on the uterus that vary in amount and size, according to Mayo Clinic. Symptoms of uterine fibroids can include heavy menstrual bleeding, longer periods, pelvic pain, and a growing stomach area, among others.
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How has having a hysterectomy changed Porsha Williams’ life?
Although she will no longer be able to carry another child, Porsha admitted to Glamour that having her hysterectomy “saved my life.” “My quality of life has improved 100 percent since. I hadn’t realized the fibroids were behind my migraines, my low iron levels, or how stressed my body had been just from every day life,” she wrote. “I’d also lost my ability to have sex, since the fibroids had grown large enough to close off more than 60 percent of my birth canal, and put my bladder at risk from the sheer weight.”
How has Porsha Williams’ daughter Pilar McKinley helped her through her fibroids?
Porsha told Glamour that her 7-year-old daughter, Pilar Jhena McKinley, has helped her cope during this difficult time. “Now I take snapshots of every single moment with my daughter. I’m even more present, more grateful, because when I look at her, I see a true miracle,” she said. “I’ve always called her my lifesaver, since she gave me my purpose, and now that feels even more true. I really was chosen to be her mom.”
RELATED: Porsha Williams Shares a New Look at Co-Parenting With Dennis McKinley: “Daddy’s Girl” (PIC)
What other Bravolebrities have had fibroids?
See what Porsha had to say about her fertility issues during RHOA Season 12.
