21 Things Women Didn't Realize Their Body Could Do Until It Just... Happened

"It will never go back to before unless I get surgery, which I will have to wait until I'm done having kids (which I want more of). It isn't painful; it doesn't really affect my day-to-day life (urinating, sexual relations, etc.), except that I can no longer wear a menstrual cup. I am in my 20s, healthy, and so not the usual type of person who gets prolapses, but it can happen, and I wish more people talked about it so I wouldn't have felt like such an alien."

—rohonhonhon

3. "About six years ago, I started having debilitating pain in my lower back and groin. I was no longer able to sleep on my right side because my back would get 'stuck' in the middle of the night, and I couldn't roll over. I started at my gynecologist and was told it was my IUD, so I had it taken out; the pain persisted. Then they thought I might have cysts on my ovaries, but after a super invasive ultrasound with a wand, no ovary issues were found. I was sent to a pain specialist, and after x-rays and an array of painful physical tests, I was sent away, basically being told it was somatic and in my head. Now, a couple years into investigating, I cannot work, hike, or ride my bike without pain."

"The spasms increased, my mobility was so limited, and I was starting to miss work frequently because my back was on fire and I couldn't move. I had an orthopedic surgery years prior due to a dance injury, so one day, I thought to call the same surgeon and see if they could check out my back and hip. After the first MRI, my labrum was torn. This was unfortunate yet fortunate news because my intuition was validated, but because I hadn't had a specific injury, something else caused the tear. I was so lucky that the top hip surgeon in the country was at my practice. 

It was discovered that I was born with hip dysplasia, so my pelvis was cut in four places, and my hip joint was moved to the correct position. It was a journey with crutches, a cane, and months of physical therapy, but I am back to 100%. This occurs more often than we originally knew, and I have since met more people my age (I'm 36 now) with similar issues. It is generally female and the firstborn due to the mother's initial trauma to the birth canal. Pediatricians are checking babies now and can provide early intervention. The surgery I had was Periacetabular Osteotomy (PAO). Hopefully, this will provide some guidance and assurance that you can trust your gut if experiencing something similar."

—Allie, 36

4. "I would've considered myself a healthy 33-year-old at the time. I worked out a few times a week, ate a healthy diet, and worked a non-sedentary job. One evening at dinner, I received an alert from my Apple Watch that my heart rate had unusually increased to 110bpm. I thought nothing of it until it happened again a couple of days later, followed by a sudden round of deep, hard heartbeats lasting a few seconds (tachycardia). I blamed it on holiday stress, but still scheduled an appointment with my primary care provider who was booked out a whole month."

"Before I could make it to my appointment, my average resting heart rate had increased to 120 bpm (140 at work), I began to have hot flashes, needed to take frequent breaks at work, had trouble breathing, lost my voice, lost my appetite, and lost 14 pounds. My coworker's husband, a vascular surgeon, stopped by our office to bring her flowers one morning and noticed me hot flashing. It took him less than 30 seconds to diagnose me with hyperthyroidism based on the jugular pulses in my neck. 

He ordered bloodwork for me and sent the results to my primary care provider, who immediately sent me to an endocrinologist. He diagnosed me with Grave's Disease. I never thought I was at risk of an autoimmune disease (no family history of any of them). I also fully understood a friend of mine living with Lupus when she told me that autoimmune diseases feel like your body's working against you no matter how healthy you try to be."

—Shanae, 35

19. "In my late 20s, during grad school, I took up exercise for stress relief and ended up dropping weight and putting on muscle. I felt great, except for my periods. For 15 years, I'd had a cycle that was clockwork regular, only a few days, and with little to no symptoms. Just an annoyance. After I got fit, my cycle was sometimes longer or sometimes shorter than usual, the days were no longer consistent, and I suddenly had extreme nausea and 'lie-in-bed-and-wait-for-death' cramps."

"Most of what's online about this topic is about those who are overweight and find their periods regulate with weight loss or those who are anorexic who lose it entirely with extreme weight loss, neither of which applied to me. But the best I could find is that body fat and hormones are linked, and when I lost the body fat, it threw mine out of whack. I've since put some of the weight back on during the pandemic, and my periods have evened out a bit, but I still get the nausea."

—lobster_lemon_lime