LENA TALKS ABOUT LOSING THE ABILITY TO GIVE BIRTH

After suffering from an acute condition, actor Lena Dunham recently underwent hysterectomy

Actor Lena Dunham has revealed that she had a hysterectomy when she was 31, following a decade-long battle with endometriosis.

In an excruciatingly personal 2,400-word essay for Vogue, the star said she checked herself into hospital to demand her uterus and cervix be removed when the pain from the uterine condition became unbearable.

In endometriosis, the tissue which normally lines the inside of a woman’s uterus grows on the outside instead.

“In addition to endometrial disease, [I had] 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 that my stomach is full of blood,” wrote Dunham.

Her battle with the condition has been well documented. She was rushed to hospital last May after falling ill at the Met Gala in New York. 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.

“I made a choice that never was a choice for me, yet mourning feels like a luxury I don’t have. I weep big, stupid sobs, alone in the bathtub or in the area where, in a terribly cliché turn, I have started crafting,” she wrote.

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

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

“Adoption is a thrilling truth I’ll pursue with all my might. But I wanted that stomach. I wanted to know what nine months of complete togetherness could feel like. I was meant for the job, but I didn’t pass the interview. And that’s OK,” Dunham added in the essay.

Dunham created, wrote and starred in Girls, an awardwinning sitcom that tracked the lives of 20-something women in New York’s hip borough of Brooklyn. Critics say it has defined the social mores of that generation.