Lena Dunham has undergone surgery to have her ovary removed.
The ‘Girls’ actress has been in pain and struggling to "walk and pee" because her reproductive organ was encased in scar tissue and pressing on her nerves, so she had a two-hour procedure to take it out on Tuesday (16.10.18).
She took to her Instagram account to share a photo of herself in hospital and wrote: "Yesterday I had a two hour surgery to remove my left ovary, which was encased in scar tissue & fibrosis, attached to my bowel and pressing on nerves that made it kinda hard to walk/pee/vamp. Over the last month it got worse and worse until I was simply a burrito shaped like a human.
"I spent 9 hours in the post op recovery area with v low blood pressure that nurses were diligently monitoring.(sic)"
Lena’s operation comes almost a year after the 35-year-old actress underwent a hysterectomy due to endometriosis – a medical condition which causes the layer of tissue that normally covers the inside of the uterus to grow outside of it – and she admitted her ongoing problems have taught her a "big lesson" about how getting back to full health isn’t simple.
She continued: "A lot of people commented on my last post about being too sick to finish promoting my show [‘Camping’] by saying they thought my hysterectomy would have fixed it (so did I). That I should get acupuncture and take supplements (I do). That I should see a therapist because it’s clearly psychological (year 25, y’all. These are the fruits!)
"But a big lesson I’ve learned in all this is that health, like most things, isn’t linear- things improve and things falter and you start living off only cranberry juice from a sippy cup/sleeping on a glorified heating pad but you’re also happier than you’ve been in years."
While Lena is "lucky" to have health insurance and the money to afford treatment it doesn’t cover, she knows other women aren’t in the same position and has vowed to "advocate" for those who aren’t as well off.
She concluded: "I feel blessed creatively and tickled by my new and improved bellybutton and so so so lucky to have health insurance as well as money for care that is off my plan.
"But I’m simultaneously shocked by what my body is and isn’t doing for me and red with rage that access to medical care is a privilege and not a right in this country and that women have to work extra hard just to prove what we already know about our own bodies and what we need to be well. It’s humiliating.
"My health not being a given has paid spiritual dividends I could never have predicted and it’s opened me up in wild ways and it’s given me a mission: to advocate for those of us who live at the cross section of physical and physic pain, to remind women that our stories don’t have to look one way, our pain is our gain and oh s**t scars and mesh ‘panties’ are the f***ing jam. Join me, won’t you?(sic)"
Lena Dunham has ovary removed
