Linda with Uterine Fibroids
Linda came to me with ongoing bleeding between periods. She already knew that she had uterine fibroids but didn’t want to have them removed. She felt it would remove her ‘womanhood’ as the doctor wanted to remove all of her uterus, not just the fibroids. Also Linda was 50 and felt that because her hormones were changing as she moved towards menopause, the hormones feeding the fibroids could also help them to disappear. Basically she wanted help to stem the flow of bleeding so she wasn’t so anaemic and tired all the time, and to shrink the fibroids because she had heard that herbs could help.
So the first plan of attack was to look at the bleeding issue. Some wonderful herbs did help and the fibroids were in fact shrinking. This we knew from ultrasound, but still the doctors wanted to remove them to prevent them turning cancerous. She refused, saying that they were there for a reason and she wanted to work out that reason first.
This was my cue to start talking about the emotional aspects relating to her fibroids. From my understanding, fibroids relate to ‘healing the hurt of a loved one’ and ‘not looking after your own needs’. Remember, these are keys words and not a diagnosis (see my introduction to the case studies). Linda could relate to this as a few years previously she nursed her dying mother from breast cancer. Of course she didn’t have the time to take care of her own needs at the time and after her mother died, she hadn’t grieved fully. ‘Life goes on being busy’, as she put it. Linda said she was never really close to her mum, so she thought that grieving for just a few days was OK. But obviously it wasn’t, because talking about it brought up tears.
I knew there was more to it that just the obvious, but she wasn’t ready to share this information and I wasn’t going to push her if she wasn’t ready. She said she knew what she had to do and went on her way. She returned next month for some more herbs and told me how she went to her mother’s grave to talk and tell her mother why she was angry with her, but never got to tell her because her mother was either too sick or too self absorbed in her own life. Anyway she felt a tremendous relief from this ‘chat’ with her mum, and slowly over the next few months the fibroid shrunk and disappeared. Ultrasound confirmed that the tumour was gone, but she was still menstruating, so she still wasn’t menopausal yet.
Not all cases of fibroids are as responsive to this kind of work and I would never suggest that anyone forgo medical treatment for any condition.