Borderline Successful: Hysterectomies and Why You Need to Back the Fuck Up

Content warning: Heavy menstrual bleeding, medical trauma and stress, surgery, reproductive health, medical racism, reference to historical involuntary sterilization.

I had a period that lasted 26 days. It ended with emergency surgery to remove a fibroid from my womb.

Before that, I spent weeks bleeding, calling doctors, forcing myself into work only to spend a quarter of the day in the bathroom, and texting people to bring pads in bulk to my office. So many super ultra jumbo tampons, paired with duvet-cover-sized pads, and I would still bleed through my clothes. I was faint, pale, tired, and drained. I frequently looked like I was about to keel over and die. But I powered through. I went out with friends, made conversation, and made life look fine. Every week got harder. I was fucking up at work more and more, and it all came to a head when there was simply too much blood to ignore. I went to the ER twice in August, received my third and fourth blood transfusions in 10 months, and needed iron and fluids to get me back to the minimum hemoglobin level required for discharge.

I had emergency surgery after the second ER visit and was admitted to the hospital for three days to wait for surgery and then recover from it. Then I got one week off before I started bleeding again. By day seven of this new period, I admitted I was scared. By day eight, I was calling it Period Part Deux: The Remix. I’m now on day 12, and I have limited capacity for anyone’s bullshit.

Somehow, sharing that experience online (partly to vent, partly to name how broken our medical system is) became an invitation for strangers to suggest that I get a hysterectomy.

Casually.

Not a careful, thoughtful question. Not a conversation grounded in my medical history. Not a decision between me and my doctor. Just: Why don’t you get a hysterectomy?

As if we’re recommending a different brand of painkiller. Tylenol or organ removal?

What the actual fuck.

The issue is not hysterectomies. The issue is treating my body like a public brainstorming exercise.

My Doctor Kept Her Opinions to Herself

My doctor brought up a hysterectomy exactly once while discussing my options.

I said I was not ready for that conversation, she respected my answer and moved on.

I was not saying never. I was saying not now, not suddenly, in the middle of a crisis that had other options and other outcomes. And she did have other options for me. None of them made jumping straight to a hysterectomy seem logical when I could try other treatments first.

I am 31, uncertain about whether I want children, not in a position to take weeks off work for major surgery, and a hysterectomy would not be gender-affirming for me. I also had an entirely treatable medical issue, and removing my womb should not become an excuse for people (or systems) to stop trying to help me.

No One on Bluesky Is My Medical Team

One friend described online commentary perfectly: “People have no immediate stopgap between typing and thinking. It becomes a word-vomit storm.”

When I’m just another account to someone, it becomes easy for them to forget that my body is not theoretical. My pain may not be their responsibility, but it is real. My organs are not a problem to solve in a reply box.

Even a joke about getting pregnant to stop the bleeding became an opening for someone to explain spotting to me, as if persistent fainting and handfuls of six-inch clots were a technicality.

I logged out of Bluesky because it kept happening. I was sick and tired. I did not have the energy to defend my right to make decisions about my own womb.

And yes, I eventually snapped at someone before leaving the app. Maybe I was too harsh. But who the fuck are you to tell me what to do with my body?

Are you going to live in my body after the surgery and carry the physical, emotional, sexual, reproductive, and practical consequences?

No?

Then back the fuck up.

A Hysterectomy Is Not a Casual Suggestion, Chill Out??

“Have you considered a hysterectomy?”

Babygirl, I could barely get a gynecology appointment. Are you going to do the surgery?

As an American, I think I’m allowed to say that suggesting organ removal instead of accessible basic care is a sign that late-stage capitalism has rotted some people’s brains. Very cut-off-your-nose-to-spite-your-face type shit. Are we crossing the plains, cutting off frostbitten limbs? Should we really give up on seeking treatment by shrugging and ripping out body parts? You sound somewhat barbaric hearing about a fibroid and suggesting a full hysterectomy. Like, Jesus Christ, are you also pro-lobotomy?

A hysterectomy is major surgery, not a punchy reply on a stranger’s post. It permanently removes the uterus, ends the possibility of pregnancy, and may also include removing the cervix, fallopian tubes, or ovaries (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Hysterectomy”). Recovery can take weeks, with pain, fatigue, bleeding or discharge, restrictions on lifting and sex, and the usual risks of major surgery (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Hysterectomy”).

If the ovaries are removed before natural menopause, menopause begins immediately and increases the risk of osteoporosis (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Hysterectomy”).

ACOG recognizes hysterectomy as a definitive and effective treatment for fibroids, while noting that many patients benefit from and seek medical, procedural, and surgical alternatives when they want future fertility or simply wish to keep their uterus (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Management”).

Not to mention that I live in a studio apartment. I would need somewhere else to stay during recovery and people to care for me because I could not safely access my loft bed or manage the apartment alone at first. This is not something I can shrug and decide on a random Wednesday. I do not have the ability to set that up for myself. If getting a hysterectomy is that straightforward for you, I am genuinely happy that that is your reality. My body is still, I know it is hard to believe, not your business.

And for me, the suggestion does not arrive without a history.

cracks knuckles

The Black Card: I’m Pulling It

Look at my Black face and give yourself four extra seconds to process why casually suggesting a hysterectomy might irk me.

In my experience, the people rushing to offer it first were more often than not white. I know Black women who have had hysterectomies. The procedure is not inherently wrong. What bothered me was the speed of the suggestion. I was a Black person describing a medical crisis, and strangers kept jumping straight to removing organs.

No, actually, you cannot be flippant about my womb. You should sit and reflect on your urge to be.

Good intentions do not erase the racial context. In the United States, Black women develop fibroids more often, at younger ages, and with greater severity, but higher incidence alone does not explain how differently we are treated once surgery enters the conversation (Eltoukhi et al.).

In a study of 15,136 hysterectomies for benign conditions, 50.1 percent of Black patients had open abdominal surgery, compared with 22.9 percent of white patients. After researchers adjusted for health factors, Black patients still had about twice the odds of an open hysterectomy and higher odds of postoperative complications (Alexander et al.).

So when a white stranger jumps from “you have fibroids” to “remove your uterus,” I am not hearing that suggestion in a historical or medical vacuum. Black women have been subjected to reproductive abuse, involuntary sterilization, unethical experimentation, and persistent barriers to equitable care (Adekunle).

Journalist Joy Sewing describes three doctors who steered her toward a hysterectomy before she found uterine fibroid embolization, which treated her fibroids while preserving her uterus. Her story does not prove every patient should choose embolization. It shows why receiving the full range of appropriate options matters (Porter II).

This is why “Have you considered a hysterectomy?” does not land as neutral advice to me. It echoes a medical culture that has too often treated Black patients’ fertility, pain, and consent as negotiable. When I say I am not considering a hysterectomy and that the suggestion hurts, that is enough. My identity, history, and relationship to my body are not debate prompts that stay open until I accept someone else’s preferred answer.

“But It Helped Me,” and I LOVE That for You

Some of these suggestions came from well-intentioned people who had chosen hysterectomies and were happy with that choice.

A hysterectomy can be the right treatment for many medical conditions, particularly when less invasive options have failed or surgery is the only effective choice. Some patients choose it for definitive relief, reduced cancer risk, or gender affirmation (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, “Hysterectomy”; Obedin-Maliver). Those are valid reasons. They do not erase the fact that I still have time and options before making a decision like that.

For some trans men and nonbinary people, a hysterectomy can be medically necessary gender-affirming care. Clinical guidance still frames whether to remove or retain reproductive organs as a personal decision shaped by the patient’s desires, future fertility, hormone plans, and medical needs (Obedin-Maliver). That reality matters.

And hey, I’m not exactly not genderqueer. I experience plenty of weirdness around my body, my gender expression, and what any of it means. But that does not automatically make a hysterectomy gender-affirming for me. Maybe some of that dysphoria comes from years of bleeding that finally got so bad I needed surgery. I don’t always feel connected to my body, and spending years trying to function with a hemoglobin level under 6 probably has something to do with it.

You can share your experience without turning it into an instruction or a condescending offering, like I’m too dumb to have thought of it. You can say, “This helped me,” without saying, “Why don’t you just do it too?” The difference is respect.

Wanting surgery for yourself is not permission to volunteer someone else for it.

My Body, My Choice Includes Choices You Dislike

“My body, my choice” does not mean “my body, your preferred solution.”

I find it especially alarming when people who champion bodily autonomy become callous the moment I make a choice they dislike or don’t understand.

I do not need strangers to fix me. I need them to listen and ask what support I want. And that support will never look like shrugging and tossing out a suggestion that would change my body and life forever like it’s a song request for the DJ.

A hysterectomy may be the right choice for many people. It may even become the right choice for me one day. If that day comes, I will decide with my medical team, on my timeline, with a full understanding of what it means.

Until then, keep your casual, off-the-cuff solutions away from my womb.

— Thanks for reading, Diva. I need a fucking cigarette.

Works Cited

Adekunle, Toluwani E. “Reproductive Coercion, Medical Mistrust, and Black Women’s Health from the Antebellum Period to the 21st Century.” International Journal for Equity in Health, vol. 24, no. 1, 5 Nov. 2025, article 302, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12587519/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

Alexander, Amy L., et al. “Examining Disparities in Route of Surgery and Postoperative Complications in Black Race and Hysterectomy.” Obstetrics & Gynecology, vol. 133, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 6–12, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6326082/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Hysterectomy.” ACOG, updated Sept. 2024, reviewed May 2025, https://www.acog.org/womens-health/faqs/hysterectomy. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. “Management of Symptomatic Uterine Leiomyomas.” ACOG, Practice Bulletin no. 228, June 2021, reaffirmed 2025, https://www.acog.org/clinical/clinical-guidance/practice-bulletin/articles/2021/06/management-of-symptomatic-uterine-leiomyomas. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

Eltoukhi, Heba M., et al. “The Health Disparities of Uterine Fibroid Tumors for African American Women: A Public Health Issue.” American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology, vol. 210, no. 3, Mar. 2014, pp. 194–199, https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3874080/. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

Obedin-Maliver, Juno. “Hysterectomy.” UCSF Gender Affirming Health Program, 17 June 2016, https://transcare.ucsf.edu/guidelines/hysterectomy. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

Porter II, Juan Michael. “Protecting Black Women From Unnecessary Hysterectomies: An Interview With Joy Sewing.” TheBody, 7 May 2021, https://www.thebody.com/article/joy-sewing-interview-protecting-black-women-from-unnecessary-hysterectomies. Accessed 8 Sept. 2026.

ATILA

Blog: atilacore.pckt.blog

Bluesky: @atilacore.bsky.social

Contact: [email protected]