Forget about wearing white. There was a time, Teresa Edwards says, when khaki wasn’t even a possibility for her during certain times of the month.
That’s how heavy her monthly menstrual cycle was, she said.
"It was embarrassing," said Edwards, an assistant coach for the WNBA's Tulsa Shock who lives in Smyrna.
Not any more.
After years of suffering and a remarkably simple 45-minute procedure called uterine fibroid embolization, Edward’s tumors soon dissolved with her uterus still intact.
“This is one of the biggest breakthroughs for women but still one that is largely unknown to them," said Dr. John Lipman, a Smyrna interventional radiologist and expert on fibroid embolization.
For that reason Lipman and Edwards have embarked upon what they call the White Pants Movement, an effort they hope will help raise awareness about the procedure and thus put an end to the bloody existence of fibroids, a noncancerous tissue growth that is a source of misery for legions of American women and black women in particularly.
That knowledge, Lipman said, could also stem the tumors' reign as the No. 1 reason nearly 700,000 hysterectomies are performed nationwide each year. Seventy percent of women, he said, don’t need them.
Unlike a hysterectomy, which has a six- to eight-week recovery period, the usual risks associated with major surgery and loss of the uterus, uterine embolization shrinks fibroids by blocking the blood supply, has a quicker recovery time and, most importantly, preserves the uterus.
“It’s important that we get the word out to these women that they have options," Lipman said.
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According to Lipman, more than 1 million women in the U.S. suffer with fibroids and up to 80 percent of African-American women of child-bearing age have them.
Why?
No one knows exactly, he said, but genetics and body fat account for the high rates.
“It’s just one more reason to live a healthy lifestyle and be as lean as possible,” Lipman said. “It’s good for heart health, it's important to preventing Type 2 diabetes, and lowering your risk for fibroids.”
Women who suffer with fibroids are often referred to as the silent sufferers because the tumors won’t kill them but they makes their lives miserable.
“Our whole life is tied to our menstrual period,” said Edwards, 47.
Although uterine embolization has been available in U.S. hospitals at least since 1996, women are still generally given only one option: hysterectomy.
But Lipman said women don’t have to lose their uterus to treat fibroids, they need their fibroids treated.
“A lot of times, patients will say,'The doctor said I’m finished having my children; I don’t need my uterus,'” said Lipman. “What they don’t tell them is that the uterus has a lot more functions than child bearing."
For instance, he said, the organ is important not only to bone health, but sexual and heart health.
In addition to surgical complications such as infection, Lipman said that women who lose their uterus exhibit higher incidences of osteoporosis, decreased libido and higher incidences of cardiovascular disease.
Lipman, who has performed more than 3,000 embolizations, said he decided to start the White Pants Movement two years ago because doctors weren’t telling their patients about the option.
“Women need to know all of their options, not just surgical ones,” he said.
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Edwards, who was recently inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame, was first diagnosed with fibroids about 10 years ago.
The former University of Georgia standout player and coach of the Atlanta Glory was in her 30s then and figured she'd eventually have to undergo a hysterectomy like her mother.
Unwilling to surrender her uterus, Edwards joined thousands of other women suffering from the condition. Her menstrual cycles were long and heavy, she was bloated and anemic. And wearing white pants -- or white anything -- was out of the question.
In 2002, she had a myomectomy that removed most of the fibroids.
“When I came to, they told me I had very small ones that they couldn’t get to so they left them inside of me,” Edwards recalled. “I thought they’d dissolve like an Alka Seltzer.”
But instead, the fibroids grew. The myomectomy proved to be only a temporary fix.
Within four years, the symptoms returned, the heavy bleeding, the fatigue. At first, Edwards said she thought she was pushing herself too hard as an athlete, but her health got much worse.
“My heart was getting bigger because less blood was pumping,” she said.
A family doctor suggested she see Lipman and in April he performed the uterine embolization.
“Three days later I caught a flight to Tulsa,” Edwards said. “I was feeling great.”
Now she wants other women to feel the same way.
“The first time I went through this, the first thing they said was hysterectomy,” she said. “I want women to know they have options. I don’t want to be quiet about this anymore.”
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