It Can Be an Agonizing Option for Any Woman

Women who have opted for a hysterectomy to remove fibroids voice concerns about losing their uterus.

Sister Elizabeth McGarvey, 44, a Dominican nun and social worker from Rosalyn, N.Y., was found to have endometriosis when she was 30. This is a condition in which fragments of uterus lining tissue become implanted on other organs within the pelvic cavity, which can cause severe pain, scarring and infertility.

For more than a decade, the pain from McGarvey’s endometriosis was controlled by birth control pills, but because of a heart condition, she had to stop taking them. Moreover, last spring she was also found to have benign fibroids, which were putting pressure on her bladder. And a cyst was found on her left ovary. “This was like history waiting to happen,” she said, because her mother had died of ovarian cancer.

She and her doctor, Paolo Mazzarella of North Shore University Medical Center in Manhasset, N.Y., “had an ongoing dialogue” about how to handle her condition, holding off as long as possible the decision to have her uterus and ovaries removed, which was done in October.

“Just because I am a nun, that doesn’t mean I don’t have thoughts about my womanhood, but I decided that an organ doesn’t make me who I am,” she said.

McGarvey said she was comfortable with her decision, because she trusted that her doctor was medically up-to-date and she could comfortably discuss her condition with him. “It really was a joint decision,” she said.