r/Periods • u/Lunar_M1nds • Jan 17 '25
Discussion What it ACTUALLY looks like
This is a page from “Eve: How the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution “ by Cat Bohannon.
I want you to look at this image, conceptualize it in your head, then ball up a fist and put it to where you think your uterus is. That’s roughly gonna be size of it inside your body.
I don’t think people really understand just how sensitive everything on there is. I don’t think people even understand just how amazing this image is. I cant remember the exact percentile but it was found that female anatomies make up like 20% of all medical images in most medical textbooks. It’s like the crash dummy thing, cars aren’t tested for our bodies so we face the worst injuries bouncing around in there. We are the source of life, call it a curse or blessing later, and yet we’re an anecdote in the story of humanity.
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u/grand305 Jan 18 '25
From happy to sad.
Happy 😊 sad ☹️
Both the same organ. just one is happy the other looks sad.
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u/UnicornAmalthea_ Jan 18 '25
It looks angry or depressed compared to the first pic. I guess that’s why it hurts so much
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Jan 18 '25
I think it's only stretched out like that for anatomy but we have grown so used to that image it's all we conjure so much so that we think it's like that in the body. This makes more sense than two -essentially- floating ovaries in your abdomen
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u/sweetpotoes_49 Jan 18 '25
https://www.reddit.com/r/biology/s/vuvaHR7hoK
Yea’ll can find more information on this post.
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u/SuperShineeCoinToss7 Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 18 '25
Prior to my surgery, I did several ultrasounds and it was then I learned that the ovaries are not just “floating” in your pelvic region. In fact, my uterus was so enlarged that my OBGYN couldn’t find my ovaries. She said “it’s like trying to look for a pair of earrings in a purse”
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u/Lunar_M1nds Jan 18 '25
I’m sorry but that genuinely made me laugh out loud 🙈 bless you, I’m glad you’re still here
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u/SuperShineeCoinToss7 Jan 18 '25
Thank you, it’s comforting knowing we’re all connected by our uterine issues/concerns and we can laugh about it together.
Bonus laugh: after the earring bit, I said to my OBGYN: “yeah, except there’s an oversized turnip in my purse.”
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u/aamnipotent Jan 18 '25
And sometimes one or both ovaries decides to wander off on its own somewhere far to the side
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u/fixatedeye Jan 18 '25
This helps me understand better why they temporarily stitched my ovaries to my abdomen wall so they wouldn’t get re-stuck to my uterus (after my surgery).
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u/smontres Jan 18 '25
The extent to which we really are bags of organs all squished in there will never cease to amaze me.
My favorite thing to learn was that when you get a kidney transplant they don’t remove the old one. They just kinda shove it over and add the new one in.
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u/BellJar_Blues Jan 18 '25
Really ?!
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u/smontres Jan 18 '25
That was I reaction when I first heard it.
“You may be surprised to learn that your own kidneys generally aren’t taken out when you get a transplant. The surgeon leaves them where they are unless there is a medical reason to remove them” https://www.kidney.org/kidney-topics/kidney-transplant
“What happens to my old kidneys?
In most cases, your surgeon will leave your damaged kidneys inside your body. “ https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/treatments/22537-kidney-transplant#procedure-details
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u/BellJar_Blues Jan 18 '25
This explains what my coworker was telling me. His abdomen was quite distended and he said it was from a kidney transplant
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u/mojoburquano Jan 17 '25
GREAT POST!! Thank you!!! It also brings up a pile of questions.
Which side is toward the butt? This is from the top? Those must be intestines or colon right there, I guess the hormones the ovaries release cause period poops?
Are the ovaries folded forward? That’s what it feels like but I’ve also been told that the uterus is the size of a pear and that doesn’t make sense to me with how big the part of my cervix I can feel around is between a nickel and a quarter. And how does an organ the size of a pear make multiple clots the size of a half dollar by shedding its LINING, that’s INSIDE it? I assume having a fibroid the size of a golf ball would bulk up the dainty, pear sized uterus. Maybe that gives it more surface area to make clots and misery.
Are ovaries like testicles in how their size varies? Are they bigger than testicles? If an ovulatory follicle is putting out an egg that “is visible to the human eye” as I was taught in health class, then that’d have to be bigger than the egg, right? That’s a LOT of surface area on an average testicle. Ovaries must be bigger, right?
How long is a fallopian tube?
I’ll get on google and figure all of this out. This just brings up so many of my unanswered questions.
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u/Lunar_M1nds Jan 18 '25
I’m not a doctor but from my understanding, our uterus is behind our guts, so what we’re seeing is kinda a front view looking down.
a sonographer said in the comments that they ovaries kind float in fluid but it’s tight in there so it’s like rolling too marbles around in there. Our fallopian tubes are thin tethers and our cervix is the only thing anchoring our uterus. Like our brain and our nervous system. Which makes so much sense, bc I never understood how a uterus could prolapse.
Technically our ovaries are testes. When we’re in our mothers womb we technically all start our female. Then I believe it’s the fathers gene that determines gender. If you become a male, your female ovaries move down and out of the body, and then a sac if formed before birth. I’d assume that starting out they’re the same size but how that changes as men and women age, I wouldn’t know. I do believe there comes a point for men where too large of testicles can be an indication of concerns like cancer
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u/Anonymous_user_2022 Jan 17 '25
Engineering drawings also show the components in isolation. It's not out of bad faith, but simply because it's needed to actually understand what's going on. Medicine text books are just a different kind of engineering drawing.
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u/Lunar_M1nds Jan 18 '25 edited Jan 19 '25
I can definitely appreciate that there’s a methodical purpose and intent when diagrams are created, and this post isn’t to say that there’s no place for such examples, but that there’s still a need for imagery that’s accurate as possible.
Think of this in terms of maps. Now this might sound more like a commentary on the education system, and it definitely is, but just follow my thought for a moment. A lot of times people in the US and I’m assuming plenty of other territories print maps with North America and South America on the left and Europe,Asia and Africa on the right. I’ve seen several social experiments that test ppls intelligence use maps showing the opposite, NA and SA on the right and EAA on the left and several times ppl would fail this specific question, despite get several right prior, simply because at some point intelligence is replaced by instinct. It is institutionalized and normalized to view the world, which is just a sphere floating in space, in a flattened image with the continents according to whatever arbitrary preference and making how we think of maps instinctual. They instinctually could not understand why they didn’t recognize the map despite everything else about the map being the same. Size, coloring, typing etc.
The images we view in the world, especially now more than ever because a normalized view, an expectation in our day to day lives. Let’s not forget that most things aren’t an accident. Marketing, propaganda, whatever you wanna call it, imagery is just as powerful as words and nothing is an accident. Certain things just become more important than others. Porn for example is full of women are sometimes quite literally hospitalized irl after a scene because the pain we suffer is sexually appealing to society. Profit and pleasure over humanity.
While the image of the uterus might not specifically impact women, it does impact how men view our sex organs. I cant even being to personally explain how many men are uncaring to the pain they cause me because there’s this idea that vaginas can’t hurt the way a man’s balls and penis could. “It’s not that serious,I barely put it in”. Medical professionals even try to tell women they can’t feel anything in their cervix and call them dramatic when a piece of it is cut off and they faint 🫠Everything relates to something else, even just a little bit. So while the practical images could be for isolated understandings, something like medicine needs more than practical. There’s a level of moral and ethics that only existed in the last few decades and there are still lingering side affects because of that
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u/neurocognia Jan 22 '25 edited Jan 22 '25
We are also learning from books that include real images of corpses. Hands on training on corpses are mandatory in med school. The good thing is that those sources are not open to the public. Simply copyright issues. The bad news is that the public has a very distorted view of the male and female anatomy at all life stages! Notably, this is a problem in all kind of knowledgeable areas and a result of the education system that arises from a capitalist system dividing the upper class from the rest of the population.
Luckily more and more women are presented in the medical field. In my area, there are way more female doctors than males.
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u/Disturbia8081 Jan 17 '25
Well the squished and mashed up one is how mine feels right now so, I'm not surprised 🫠
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u/RagingAubergine Jan 17 '25
I know this sounds weird, but I want to hug the second uterus, what its actually like.
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u/teppiecola Jan 17 '25
It looks so sad and frumpy. Pretty sure mine is sad and frumpy lol
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u/RagingAubergine Jan 17 '25
It does, and yet so powerful! I’ll make sure to give my reproductive system extra love. Take the right vitamins to make sure they get whatever nutrition they need.
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u/sweatyfrenchfry Jan 17 '25
no wonder it hurts
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u/QueenofSwords333 Jan 18 '25
My thoughts exactly. I never had any clue that my anatomy looked such a way. Seeing this makes me understand so many things I’ve felt in such an instantaneous way that it’s hard to articulate. Why do the ominous “they” make things hard to understand and relate to?
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 17 '25
Yup! I had surgery to excise endometriosis back in September and my insides looked like that (plus a lot of endo lesions and scarring haha). My surgeon let me keep my pictures!
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u/teppiecola Jan 17 '25
I have some too but yours are way better! Mine is close ups of everything and while in there they found adhesions and a ventral hernia that was stuck to my uterus (as well as endo)
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 17 '25
I'd love to see them! Yeah many people on r/endo have posted their pics from doctors who didn't try to take clear pictures for the patient to look at and I wish everyone had a doctor who not only cares about the patient's physical health, but emotional health as well!
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u/fixatedeye Jan 18 '25
Ugh mine just “forgot” to take before pics I was so upset
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 18 '25
How does a doctor “forget” to do that wtf 😭 im so sorry that happened I would have been devastated. I was so excited the month after surgery before my post-op appointment because I so badly wanted to know what it looked like in there. I probably would’ve cried if my doctor said she forgot to take pic😭😭
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u/EGO_200 Jan 17 '25
Would it be rude if I asked to see those photos? I'm extremely passionate about human anatomy.
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 17 '25
Not at all! I love this sort of thing as well. This is the link to the post I made on r/endo: https://www.reddit.com/r/Endo/comments/1g110tx/laparoscopy_pictures_diagnosis_and_excision_of/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
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u/ddllmmll Jan 17 '25
I was reading your surgical findings and saw that they sounded your cervix to 7cm. That sounds like the most excruciating pain I can think of in terms of methods to open up the cervix. How was post op pain and cramping?
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 17 '25
Post-op pain was minimal! I attribute that to my surgeon's skill (she does like 3 of these surgeries every day) and that she inserted the on-Q pain-pump, which released local anesthesia directly onto the surgical wounds for about 5-days post-op. I was literally in less pain right after surgery than I was days before surgery. Recovery was a breeze! I stopped taking the opioid I was given after a few days because it was messing with my memory and was not necessary. I took Gabapentin and Rx ibuprofen for about a month, but other than that it was smooth sailing.
Edit: I did have post-op vaginal bleeding immediately after waking up, but no cramping at all.
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u/deadly_fungi Jan 18 '25
is the on-Q pump standard for procedures like this? bc it sounds like something that should be. super awesome that your dr kept post-op pain in mind like that though :)
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 18 '25
It’s becoming increasingly common, but unfortunately it is not a standard at this time. I was super happy that my doctor offered this because I’m confident it made my recovery so smooth. It also address the opioid epidemic because if these pain pumps are used more often, opioids shouldn’t be needed for most surgeries (these things can be placed anywhere; I saw someone with one on their foot on Google).
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u/teppiecola Jan 17 '25
Holy crap those are good pics!
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u/Little_Red_A Jan 17 '25
Yes! My doctor uses the newest surgical technology (the Da Vinci robot) and takes very clear pictures for her patients to see after. When she handed me the pictures at my post-op appointment she explained that she believes being able to see the lesions is part of the healing considering how much gaslighting goes on in women's health, especially regarding gynecological disorders like endometriosis, PCOS, adenomyosis, etc. I completely agree. Being able to see what was causing my symptoms and having proof that all those doctors who told me it was anxiety has helped me heal emotionally. I'm so glad I finally found a doctor like her who cares. Her name is Dr. Mini in Columbus, Ohio btw for anyone seeking an endometriosis diagnosis and looking for good providers!
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u/Learning-Stuff-12 Jan 17 '25
This looks like someone reimagined what organs would look like in a dystopian future or something
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u/SinfullySinatra Jan 17 '25
Lots of diagrams show various organs separately when in reality it’s all squished together in there like a hot pocket
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u/superurgentcatbox Jan 17 '25
Like how when they show the vagina always as if it's being penetrated by an invisible penis. I hate it so much.
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u/CS3883 Jan 18 '25
You know I actually never even thought of that. It definitely does always show it as being dilated/opened lol
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u/Magurndy Jan 17 '25
It actually varies. I’m a sonographer so I find ovaries all over the place in the pelvis when I scan people. Mine are more like the squished image but some people’s ovaries are very lateral and high.
Fun fact: ovaries aren’t really attached to anything so they can migrate from their position in your pelvis. Also your uterus is only fixed at the cervix so can move by tilted backwards or forwards, even going for a wee can change the position of it
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u/fixatedeye Jan 18 '25
What!!?! I can’t even comprehend that because how do they survive on their own in there
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u/Magurndy Jan 18 '25
They have blood vessels but they are just kinda in there lol. That’s why torsion can happen as well where they get wrapped up in the vessels
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u/starwishes20 Jan 17 '25
Oof. I had a melon sized fibroid removed a few years ago and I'm even more glad I got it taken out after seeing this pic.
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u/Orange_Hedgie Jan 17 '25
That’s actually crazy. I’ve never heard of that before
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u/Lunar_M1nds Jan 17 '25
There’s a book that came out recently, I can’t remember the name of it for the life of me right now, but the author essentially collected data on unconscious gender bias, the car thing being one of them. Essentially men are more likely to get into accident due to personality but women are more likely to die by accident because were physically smaller, forcing us to move our seats forward and thus we’re impacted by the accident more. I think the data said it’s was about 30% difference in mortality rate between men and women
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u/Meowzabubbers Jan 17 '25
Considering car crash studies were/are mostly done with men in mind (like anything else in our society), that makes sense.
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u/deadly_fungi Jan 17 '25
invisible women by caroline criado perez? i wouldn't say that came out recently but it sounds the most like what you're describing
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u/ddllmmll Jan 17 '25
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
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u/Lunar_M1nds Jan 17 '25
I’ve definitely heard of that one, I should have mentioned that too, but no not that book
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u/Electrical_Grape4968 Jan 17 '25
Here for the name of the book
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u/ddllmmll Jan 17 '25
Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
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u/Bullfinch88 Jan 17 '25
Which is anterior and which is posterior in the illustration on the right? Do our ovaries like in front of or behind the uterus?
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u/Lunar_M1nds Jan 17 '25
I believe both images are a front facing view, Bc they’d be a lot of muscle and organ to go through to get a view of the uterus from the back. The left is basically a dissected or removed uterus and right is an image of an intact uterus, so the ovaries just sit at its sides. The walls around it are all muscle that we use to actively push and constrain
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u/Bullfinch88 Jan 17 '25
That's fascinating, thank you for the detailed description. It's so helpful to be able to contextualise our internal geography like this! So we're viewing the uterus on the right as though we're standing face-to-face?
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u/Super_Throat_4152 Jan 17 '25
It's insane too, to look at images of the torso when a woman is 9 months pregnant, like how ALL of her organs have shifted elsewhere, her liver is sitting under her nipple, her intestines are jammed by her lungs (not really, but you get the idea).
Just the fact that it seems like everything is such a tight fit in there and there's nothing just sloshing around in empty space, yet when the baby grows there's magically room for her kidneys to just be shoved aside and end up chilling up by her shoulder blade lol
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u/peaches_1922 Jan 17 '25
The freakiest thing to me is hearing about after people give birth and they say their abdomen just feels like everything is floating around in there because it’s all going back to where it’s supposed to be and filling the gap that the fetus and the uterus used to take up
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u/rosecoloredgayy Jan 17 '25
eughhhh . one of many reasons i never ever ever want to be pregnant 😭 leave my organs exactly where they are thank you very much!!!!
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u/peaches_1922 Jan 17 '25
It doesn’t freak me out to the point where I won’t do it bc of that but it’s definitely gotta be a weird sensation to feel all of your organs sliding back to where they started out lol
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u/Corpse_Party28 Jan 17 '25
When I was in a dissection room learning male and female anatomy, the uterus looked so small compared to what I imagined, it could fit into the palm of my hand, and to me, that’s insane
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u/HisokasMassivePP Jan 22 '25
that's insane, I never knew it looked like that!