In case you didn’t know, July is Fibroids Awareness Month and more famous faces are starting to open up about their journey with the uterine disease. The latest one is Oscar-winning actress Lupita Nyong’o.
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In a new post to Instagram on Tuesday, the “Us” star revealed that she received a diagnosis of fibroids back in 2014, the same year she received the Academy Award for her role in “12 Years A Slave.” For context, fibroids are noncancerous tumors that can grow within or around the uterus and causea variety of symptoms like heavy bleeding, painful periods, severe cramps and even pose a risk to fertility.
Nyongo’o then shockingly shared that she had 30 of them in her uterus and had to get surgery to get them removed. As a result of suffering in silence for years, she began opening up to her close friends about her experience and realized that she wasn’t alone in her struggle.
Now, she’s joined a handful of congresswomen to introduce a package of uterine fibroid Congressional bills that would “expand research funding, increase early detection and interventions for uterine fibroids, study the causes of uterine cancer, and increase public awareness.” She’s also started the FWH x Lupita Nyong’o Uterine Fibroid Research Grant in tandem with the Foundation for Women’s Health to “research proposals to develop minimally invasive or non-invasive treatments for uterine fibroids to reduce symptoms and improve quality of life.”
Seeing her transparency, it got us thinking about the handful of other women who’ve been outspoken about their battle with fibrods like Venus Williams, Cynthia Bailey and more. So keep reading to see a glimpse of their stories.
Venus Williams
Earlier in July, Venus Williams shared that she’d been dealing with fibroids for years. Specifically, in a recent interview with TODAY, she referenced a moment while training for Wimbledon in 2016 when she was doubled over in pain and said that doctor’s brushed off her symptoms for years before she received her official diagnosis.
“I didn’t know that they were really big,” Williams said. “I didn’t know that they were growing and growing and growing.”
She added: “I had no idea what that meant. No one explained it to me. Looking back, that’s not funny at all to take away someone’s opportunity to have a child or create a family if they want to. It’s not a joke.”
Amber Ruffin
As we previously told you, in 2022, comedian and late night show host Amber Ruffin got all the way real about her battle with fibroids, revealing that she initially ignored all the horrible symptoms she was experiencing for years until it became too much to bare.
“I ignored all of the symptoms because of a history of horrible doctors,” she said. “I was also more interested in working than taking the time I needed to make sure my friggin’ uterus didn’t fall out. That’s crazy behavior that will surely put you in danger. But I did exactly that.”
She ultimately decided to get a hysterectomy to be done with dealing with her uterus and all the issues.
Beverly Johnson
Legendary supermodel Beverly Johnson has been speaking out about her experience with fibroids since the 1980s. Though she had a previous procedure to get rid of them in 1999, they ended up growing back. So, at age 47, she had a hysterectomy in an attempt to deal with them pesky tumors once and for all. Unfortunately, it led to her experiencing early menopause.
“It was a life changing moment. I went from my swinging forties to full blown menopause and I was not prepared,” she said in an interview with PEOPLE in 2022.
Eve
Shortly after getting married in 2014, rapper Eve began going through some trouble while trying to get pregnant and start a family. Some time between 2020-2021, she had been diagnosed fibroids and endometriosis. While she underwent surgery to have them removed, she still had to try IVF in order to have a child. Thankfully, the method was successful and she gave birth to a healthy baby boy.
Cynthia Bailey
It wasn’t until Cynthia Bailey got pregnant with her daughter Noelle in 2000 that she learned she had fibroids. Though the “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star’s symptoms were minimal at first, they began to get progressively worse over time to the point where she was suffering through anemia from heavy bleeding, pelvic pain and non-food cravings for things like ice and chalk. She eventually decided to get a uterine fibroid embolization (UFE), a minimally invasive procedure in which tiny particles are injected into the blood vessels that feed fibroids causing them to shrink.
Kenya Moore
For “Real Housewives of Atlanta” star Kenya Moore, her journey with fibroids began in her early 30s which led to her undergoing several surgeries to get them out of her body. In an essay for Oprah Daily in 2018, she detailed that she had one fibroid the size of a full-term baby and that doctors warned her that her uterus may not recover from all the scarring and would make it nearly impossible for her to carry a child. Thankfully, she was able to welcome her daughter Brooklyn in 2018 at age 47.
FKA Twigs
When it comes to singer FKA Twigs, she revealed her journey with fibroids in a shocking feature for Vogue magazine in 2020. In it, she shared that she underwent laparoscopic surgery to have “six large fibroid tumors—which she likened to two apples, three kiwis, a few strawberries, and ‘a fruit bowl of pain every day’—removed from her uterus.”
“I was working so much, and I was so determined [to] make an album, that I actually knew that I had some sort of growth in my stomach for a long time, and I didn’t do anything,” she explained at the time. “I assumed that I had stomach cancer and that I was going to die. It was kind of this underlying stress that I have never told anyone about.”
Tamar Braxton
Tamar Braxton opened up about her struggles with fibroids during a roundtable discussion titled “Unmuting Fibroids: Getting Loud for Equal Care” in 2022 where she detailed that she’d been experiencing severe symptoms caused by them for years but it never raised any red flags. It wasn’t until she had a routine appointment with her gynecologist when she learned the fibroids were posing a risk to her fertility.
“I remember having numerous conversations openly about my infertility issues and not talking about the core problem,” she said at the time. “A lot of people want to talk about infertility because I think that’s a conversation that’s more comfortable to have instead of [talking about] the root of the issue, which was the fibroids.”
Yvonne Orji
“Insecure’s” Yvonne Orji got transparent about her journey with her fibroids diagnosis in 2022 when she revealed she found out about them during scans for some back issues that she was dealing with. She said that she was “shook” to find out about them as she had no symptoms or inkling that she even had them.
Nischelle Turner
In the comments section of Nyong’o’s post, popular “Entertainment Tonight” journalist and host Nischelle Turner shared that she had three surgeries in 10 years to address her issues with fibroids. She’d previously spoken out about her journey in 2022 in an interview with PEOPLE.
“When I was 35 years old, my stomach had grown to a size that looked like I was three months pregnant,” Turner said then. “And that was because the fibroids had grown so big and were protruding and pushing out my stomach. It was almost like an alien because I could move them around and I knew it wasn’t right so I went and got checked.”
Toya Johnson
Entreprenuer and WeTV star Toya Johnson recently opened up about her fibroid struggles during a lengthy discussion with the USA Fibroids Center in October 2024. During her talk, she discussed the initial symptoms she endured, the moment she learned the shocking truth, and how she dealt with them emotionally and mentally.
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