Lena Dunham had a full hysterectomy to combat endometriosis pain

Lena Dunham has hopefully, at last, put a definitive end to her endometriosis pain.

In the March 2018 issue of Vogue, which was first reported by the Endometriosis Foundation, Dunham reveals in an essay that she underwent a full hysterectomy, which entails the surgical removal of a woman’s cervix and uterus.

Dunham has been open about her struggles with endometriosis pain in the past, undergoing multiple surgeries and treatment plans and even being declared endometriosis free last spring. Shortly after, however, she canceled her Lenny Letters tour, once again experiencing complications and writing in an open letter, “I’m in the greatest amount of physical pain that I have ever experienced.”

This prompted Dunham to have elective surgery to remove her reproductive organs as an attempt to end the pain once and for all. The surgery revealed that other complications with her internal organs were causing her further pain.

“In addition to endometrial disease,” she writes in Vogue, “an odd hump-like protrusion and a septum running down the middle, I have retrograde bleeding, a.k.a. my period running in reverse so that my stomach is full of blood. My ovary has settled in on the muscles around the sacral nerves in my back that allow us to walk. Let’s please not even talk about my uterine lining. The only beautiful detail is that the organ — which is meant to be shaped like a light bulb — was shaped like a heart.”

In the essay, Dunham also opens up about her desire to be a mother despite her medical inability to carry a child. “I may have felt choiceless before, but I know I have choices now,” she wrote. “Soon I’ll start exploring whether my ovaries, which remain someplace inside me in that vast cavern of organs and scar tissue, have eggs. Adoption is a thrilling truth I’ll pursue with all my might.”

Read the full story on Vogue here.