Uterine fibroids range from almond to watermelon size and can press on your bladder and bowel, causing urgency, leakage, and constipation. Heavy bleeding, painful sex, and leg pain are common. Large fibroids may affect pregnancy, and rapid growth is rare but warrants imaging to rule out malignancy.
So they can be as small as like an almond. They can be as big as a grapefruit or even a watermelon. So you can imagine once they get to be bigger size that they take up space in your pelvis. They can actually push on the bladder and cause you to have bladder symptoms. Leakage, unable to empty your bladder, or just an annoyance like you have to go all the time. They can block the bowels and cause constipation. They can irritate the bowels and cause increased peristalsis and diarrhea. So any kind of bladder and bowel changes associated with large fibroids can really start to interfere with life. Fibroids, because they have so much blood supply, they can lead to bleeding in between periods. They can cause heavier periods, they can cause longer periods. So you're lasting like, you know, over a week. It can be really painful with intercourse. You know, a lot of times when the cervix is being pushed physically by penetration that is moving the whole uterus and all the fibroids in it. And that can be really painful. Sometimes women will complain of leg aches, pains down their legs, heaviness in their pelvis, or feeling and looking pregnant when they're not all of those from fibroids. So it's not fun. And what happens is most of the time these are slow growing and slow, so you're not really aware that they're growing until they get to a big enough point where they're actually causing those symptoms. It's really uncommon to have quick growth. Like I mentioned, that's more often associated with malignant process. So you definitely want to have an evaluation with an ultrasound and possibly an MRI to see what these fibroids look like, where they're at, what are they pushing on and see are they growing over time. So that's the biggie. You know, if they're small and they're not really interfering with things, a lot of times you can just let them be. And I've seen many women get pregnant over the years with fibroids and carry their pregnancies to terms and not have issues, but they definitely have the possibility of interfering with placental growth if you have multiple fibroids in the submucosal area, or they sometimes can be associated with preterm labor because they can cause the uterus to contract and be irritated. So that is something they will look for if you are pregnant or if you are having recurrent miscarriage or issues. They'll evaluate for fibroids.
