Each day I answer a call or email from a uterine fibroid patient, it is a very personal experience for me.

Over a decade ago, my mother avoided having a hysterectomy due to uterine fibroids.  Many of the conversations I have had recently with patients bring back memories of conversations I had with my mother years ago. She had been proactive and found a physician who was open to working with her to spare her uterus.  She was only in her mid to late 40s at the time (so young). However, until I interviewed for this position, I was unaware that my grandmother had had a radical hysterectomy thirty years earlier due to fibroids as well.  And when I mean radical, I mean RADICAL.  My mother recalls my grandmother having to leave church one Sunday, blood running down her legs, soaking her dress. But no one said a word. It just wasn’t discussed.

With this family history, it makes me wonder, why at age 38, have I been clear of fibroids up to this point? I feel very fortunate.

Uterine fibroids are an interesting thing.  There is a clearly a genetic component since they appear to run in families.  However, solid research is lacking to help explain why some women in one family develop fibroids and why others do not.

Researchers at the Center for Uterine Fibroids at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston are looking for female relatives to participate in a clinical research study to help identify the causes of uterine fibroids.  If you are interested in contributing to this study, please click on this link for more information.

This is a wonderful way for you to give back and possibly help researchers identify some of the genetic markers that are just waiting to be discovered.  Perhaps this research will help our daughters and granddaughters be spared some of the suffering our relatives, past and present, have endured and continue to endure.

Until next time,

Tina