A story that is
TRUELY
ROMANTIC
Owning it as a Unicorn
Now this is girly stuff, so be warned that if you are sensitive to even the word ‘period’ (I have dealt with this kind of male sensitivity for 15 years so understand), you may want to just skim read the headings!
After all my testing, the results are that I was born a unicorn. Not the legendary animal with one large pointed spiral horn, but a legendary woman with one working ovary and half a unterus.
The proper name for it is a unicornuate uterus.
It’s a uterine malformation where the uterus is formed from only one of the paired Müllerian ducts while the other Müllerian duct does not develop or only in a rudimentary fashion. The sometimes called hemi-uterus has a single horn linked to the ipsilateral fallopian tube that faces its ovary.
What the hang am I talking about? I have half of all the female bits.
Normal uterus
This alone would prove problematic, as it would provide half the opportunities. However, I also have fibroids.
Before we get onto fibroids, here’s a fun fact; you don’t ovulate from each ovary alternatively. This may come as a surprise to anyone why did high school sex ed. The reality is that you ovulate from which ever ovary gets the egg to the right maturity at the right time – so somewhat randomly. For some woman this may be alternately, but as my Dr said, it’s like flipping a coin.
So when you have only one producing ovary, knowing when its producing is hard, but not impossible.
Introducing Fibroids.
Uterine fibroids, which go by heaps of other, medical sounding names (uterine leiomyoma, myoma, fibromyoma, fibroleiomyoma), are benign smooth muscle tumors of the uterus. Most women have no symptoms while others may have painful or heavy periods. If they push on the bladder a frequent need to urinate may occur. They may also cause pain during sex or lower back pain. A woman can have one uterine fibroid or many of them.
And if you have heaps of them, it can make it difficult to get pregnant. They are typically found during the middle and later reproductive years, and just to be ironic, after menopause they usually decrease in size!
Yes, they can be removed. Some websites say that removal of the whole uterus helps alleviate symptoms, unless the symptom is that you can’t get pregnant…!
The exact cause is unclear. However, fibroids run in families and appear to be partly determined by hormone levels. Cancerous versions of fibroids are very rare (known as leiomyosarcomas) and do not appear to develop from benign fibroids.
