It seems like there is such a wide array of experiences. I am interested in how people feel about how they were treated/if there were symptoms/etc.
27 comments
I had a 5cm ovary on my right ovary a few years ago. It felt like really awful period cramps, hot, nauseated and dizzy. I couldn’t sit up straight or stand up straight and the pain didn’t go away with midol or a heating pad.
I felt the pain from the cyst in my bottom and that’s when I went to the er. They did an internal scan.
I was told that it would go away on its own and to take tylenol and use a heating pad.
I had an appointment with my obgyn a few weeks later to ensure it was gone and it was, but there was a small cyst on my left ovary when I went to my appointment.
I just feel pressure for a few days, sometimes a cramp. I use a heating pad and they resolve on their own. I do know women who have had very large cysts that were more painful and had to be drained
They have varied for me. Some are annoying and cause some cramping, I’ve had a couple that hemorrhaged (not to the point I needed surgery) and that was awfully painful. I did go to the ER once as I had such sudden, horrific pain I couldn’t breathe and almost passed out, and I have a very high pain tolerance. Turns out one had completely filled with blood and was slowly leaking, which meant prolonged pain. I was in the ER for nine hours and the end result was saying next time just wait and see if I start bleeding out, and if so, then come in again. Yaaaay.
My sister has PCOS and it is truly awful for her. She finally had a tubal ligation a couple years ago and the OBGYN said they had never seen someone with so many cysts covering the ovaries and fallopian tubes in all her years of practice. Horrific periods, horrible pain, weight gain, etc.
I didn’t know I even had them until I was at the gym one evening and they bursted. I was puking and near passing out from the pain, had to go to the ER. Didn’t know that’s what had happened to me until I saw the bleeding and whatnot after they sent me home with pain meds.
I had an ovarian cyst so large when I was 21 years old that it twisted my fallopian tube, cutting off the blood supply to said ovary, causing me excruciating paint which lead to ovary death. I went to the ER and they thought it was my appendix. Opened me up, took out my appendix, said, “Hm…this seems fine. Let’s explore?” So they fished around since it was a teaching hospital and said that things were in the wrong place, the cyst was the size of a large orange and had pushing things around. When they found it, they removed it.
0/10 would not recommend as an experience.
I didn’t know I had any until a pregnancy ultrasound showed very small cysts on one side. They haven’t caused any issues or pain and my doctor was not concerned. I have a very regular cycle and not much in the way of pain.
Was feeling really bloated n gain some weight, I had first scan in February n there was nothing but i was not feeling well than suddenly in June I was in debilitating pain, couldn’t even stand up. Found out that I have 12cm cyst n it got twisted. Worst pain everrrr, had to get emergency surgery
I had it, multiple of them. I even stopped getting periods due to it for months. Then I drank some water with apple cider vinegar before every meal and it worked, of course by God’s will. When I got checked recently there was no more cysts.
I had one the size of a grapefruit. No symptoms I noticed, but they cut it out eventually.
I really appreciate all the responses from everyone so much. Thanks for being willing to share this part of your lives, and I hope everything that can go right when dealing with these things goes right in the future for all of you.
I sneezed, they ruptured, I bled a lot.
Mine were spotted in a random ultrasound. The doctor was hyper flippant about it as if it was the most normal thing ever and told me to lose weight without explaining WHY that would make a difference if at all. They were causing severely irregular periods – so I was prescribed Metformin for a while. Periods did regularize but metformin brought prolonged GI issues and so I had to stop that.
What I should have been told is the critical link between sugar intake, obesity and multiple ovarian follicles developing simulataneously. I got that detail some 15 years later while reading Secret life of Fat by Sylvia Tara and going through egg retrieval
Worst pain ive ever experianced.
Had an 11cm cystadenoma, needed a laparotomy
One of mine popped on its own and it felt like I got shot. But I’m still happy it did that instead of having to be surgically removed.
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I didn’t know I had one until it ruptured, I went to emergency in 8/10 pain.. I thought my IUD got displaced turns out I had a cyst. No blood but the free fluid filled my abdominal cavity and was very uncomfortable/painful for several days after. This just happened about 2 weeks ago, definitely most pain I’ve ever experienced. I pray I never get one ever again
I had one when I was 19. They thought I had appendicitis. They went in and looked at it with a laparoscope. They said “you have a cyst on your ovary”. They did nothing for it and it eventually resolved on its own. It was very painful though.
W at to many horrible experiences. We very period our every other since I was about 15, got my first period at 11, I was in excruciating pain with high fever vomiting and diarrea and with extremely extremely heavy periods and it lasted days and couldn’t eat and barely drank water. I have always been told I have a very high tolerance to pain, but I was me barely able to stand let alone walk. My dad treated me like shit for it, “woman go through this all the time, you need to suck it up!”. It was always a fight trying to say it wasn’t normal to get that sick and be in that much pain and have that amount of blood, but he didn’t care and want even thinking about fact he knew I can get broken bones without crying or throwing a fuss. I still think my dad is trash all these years later. Doctors didn’t seem to care or be concerned. Way to many times of going to the ER because of the pain and dehydration and nobody seemed to care about finding the cause even though i was pretty regular at going in and it was a known cause related to reproduction.
By the time I was in my late teens/ very early 20’s I was at the point it wouldn’t take much more of anything before I’d be grabbing one of my pistols and going for a hike and never come home. I went to planned parenthood to see if they could help me, since no other doctors cared to investigate and these doctors do a lot with womans health. They saved my life. Instantly they knew, or were fairly certain, what was going on and ordered sonogram or something to look at my ovaries and there was my answer. I was getting massive cysts that were constantly bursting and dumping all those toxins into my body every month and maybe if get lucky and it be every other. They gave me birth control to see if that helped and said constantly take the active pills and not to mess with inactive, just constantly use active pills every day and dumb the rest. My life changed then. After some years I got an implant to not mess with pills anymore. In the last 15 years or however long it’s been since going in to planned parent hood and I’ve rarely gotton a period since, maybe 10, and only 2 times since have I had cysts rupture but they weren’t as severe when it happened.
I had three that ruptured between my teens and mid 20s. That means I had a bunch more that didn’t that I never knew about. Every so often I could feel the fullness and “tugging” sensation to one side and knew it was a cyst. They seem to have calmed waaaay down in my 30s.
I’m a sonographer now because of my ovarian cysts. I love my job. Thanks cysts!
One of mine burst a few months ago. Doubled over in pain, puking, nausea. It was awful.
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Back in may of this year, my period lasted longer than normal. After a couple of weeks, I grew very concerned and went to the ER. They did an ultrasound and found a cyst on one of my ovaries but told me they didn’t think it was related. I scheduled an appointment with my gynecologist and continued to have my period for 35 days until I saw her and was prescribed something to stop it. She looked at my ultrasound and told me that she thought that my long period was indeed caused by my cyst. The meds she prescribed stopped working so I tried a birth control but then was spotting for several months. Switched birth controls and am finally back to normal. I had another ultrasound and was told the cyst went away on its own. I had no pain or anything, the only thing off was my period. To this day, I wonder if I get off the pill if I’ll have another extended period… but I did a papsmear and everything came out normal so I don’t know.
I had a relatively large one (the size of a billiard ball or so?) on one of my ovaries and felt absolutely zero symptoms. I found out when I was getting an ultrasound for something else and it was a pretty easy decision to get it out before anything happened. It was a dermoid cyst, turns out the little guy had a tooth or something resembling a tooth and hair (I got to see the pictures! unfortunately, I didn’t get to keep it).
I had a couple of near-bursts and twisted ovaries that led to the most mind-numbing pain of my life, but was under-diagnosed for a long time because my pain threshold is really high.
Eventually it led me to the ER in 2017, I was 32 back then. The doctor I saw didn’t take my pain seriously, hooked me on acetaminophen IV (the equivalent of laughing at my face, let’s be honest) and refused to get me an ultrasound. She decided it was an UTI, and sent me on my merry way with broad spectrum one shot antibiotics.
A few weeks later, my GP booked me for an ultrasound and it was the most terrifying experience of my life. For twenty something minutes the technician was dead silent while performing the procedure, until he looked at me, and told me I needed emergency CT scan because there was a massive mass in my abdomen, the size of a volley ball.
As a French citizen, I had the chance to pick a private clinic covered by my healthcare for the CT scan and from that point on, it went so much better. It showed a 25+ cm cyst on my left ovary that was pressing over my entire abdominal cavity and effectively endangered my life.
Things went really fast after that. I was treated as pre cancerous because chances were dead high my cyst was “borderline”. I saw a cancer nurse, then the anesthesiologist and the surgeon who told me I would get a complete laparotomy, meaning open abdominal surgery from my rib cage to my bikini line. This was a lot to handle, and I had a moment of total blur while trying to process it all. My surgeon was both a great doctor and a really shitty human being because when I asked for my other ovary to also be removed due to high risk of a cyst popping up there, and told him I was a child free lesbian, he frowned and told me “what if you meet a man that wants to have kids ?”. I was so emotionally fragile I didn’t say anything, but I really wanted to let him know no penis would ever get inside that vagina of mine.
Surgery happened in mid-December 2017. I was supposed to spend 5 days in ICU, ten days overall hospitalised. I had a spinal IV for painkillers, which was, honestly, nothing, I didn’t even feel the numbing injection when they put the catheter in. Surgery went smoothly, the post-ablation analysis showed no cancer cells, just good old cyst juice (sorry for the graphic image).
I wanted to try walking ten hours after surgery, which I did, and less than 24 hours after, I was strolling around the ICU unit with my wires and IV, but post-surgery was honestly… a breeze ? I found myself to be kind of a warrior, and was out of the hospital three days after my surgery, which, not gonna lie, I am kind of proud of. I didn’t know such a fighter was living inside of me, and meeting her in these troubled circumstances was a good surprise.
My only issue after I left the hospital was that the self-absorbing stitches (30 !) got swallowed way, way too quickly by my immune system, and I had to have them re-done twice. But aside from that, things went so well. I didn’t really take painkillers beside the first couple of days, and though the scar is kind of ugly and massive, I can’t complain. It could have gone so much worse.
8 years later I now have to get another CT scan because *guess what*… my left ovary is being a dick (pun intended). I am not as scared as I was in 2017 because I am getting the same team, and will gladly tear the surgeon a new one because I was right, but still… this sucks. I hate that I had to fight so much and that I was gaslit by men *and* women. I will most likely advocate for myself in a far more aggressive way now, because I am tired of being treated as medicine’s afterthought, but it really is emotionally draining.
Feels like being stabbed like a hot, searing knife for a few seconds and then its over. Alarming though.
Ive only had one really bad episode that was extreamly painful and lasted a few days.. I should have gone to hospital but didnt
I have them about once a year. Extreeeeeme pain, almost can’t stand up or speak. Have to remind myself to breathe kind of pain. But for me that pain always resolves within an hour or two. Usually by then I’m at urgent care worried it’s my appendix. Annoying but no torsion or anything too bad yet.
27 comments
I had a 5cm ovary on my right ovary a few years ago. It felt like really awful period cramps, hot, nauseated and dizzy. I couldn’t sit up straight or stand up straight and the pain didn’t go away with midol or a heating pad.
I felt the pain from the cyst in my bottom and that’s when I went to the er. They did an internal scan.
I was told that it would go away on its own and to take tylenol and use a heating pad.
I had an appointment with my obgyn a few weeks later to ensure it was gone and it was, but there was a small cyst on my left ovary when I went to my appointment.
I just feel pressure for a few days, sometimes a cramp. I use a heating pad and they resolve on their own. I do know women who have had very large cysts that were more painful and had to be drained
They have varied for me. Some are annoying and cause some cramping, I’ve had a couple that hemorrhaged (not to the point I needed surgery) and that was awfully painful. I did go to the ER once as I had such sudden, horrific pain I couldn’t breathe and almost passed out, and I have a very high pain tolerance. Turns out one had completely filled with blood and was slowly leaking, which meant prolonged pain. I was in the ER for nine hours and the end result was saying next time just wait and see if I start bleeding out, and if so, then come in again. Yaaaay.
My sister has PCOS and it is truly awful for her. She finally had a tubal ligation a couple years ago and the OBGYN said they had never seen someone with so many cysts covering the ovaries and fallopian tubes in all her years of practice. Horrific periods, horrible pain, weight gain, etc.
I didn’t know I even had them until I was at the gym one evening and they bursted. I was puking and near passing out from the pain, had to go to the ER. Didn’t know that’s what had happened to me until I saw the bleeding and whatnot after they sent me home with pain meds.
I had an ovarian cyst so large when I was 21 years old that it twisted my fallopian tube, cutting off the blood supply to said ovary, causing me excruciating paint which lead to ovary death. I went to the ER and they thought it was my appendix. Opened me up, took out my appendix, said, “Hm…this seems fine. Let’s explore?” So they fished around since it was a teaching hospital and said that things were in the wrong place, the cyst was the size of a large orange and had pushing things around. When they found it, they removed it.
0/10 would not recommend as an experience.
I didn’t know I had any until a pregnancy ultrasound showed very small cysts on one side. They haven’t caused any issues or pain and my doctor was not concerned. I have a very regular cycle and not much in the way of pain.
Was feeling really bloated n gain some weight, I had first scan in February n there was nothing but i was not feeling well than suddenly in June I was in debilitating pain, couldn’t even stand up. Found out that I have 12cm cyst n it got twisted. Worst pain everrrr, had to get emergency surgery
I had it, multiple of them. I even stopped getting periods due to it for months. Then I drank some water with apple cider vinegar before every meal and it worked, of course by God’s will. When I got checked recently there was no more cysts.
I had one the size of a grapefruit. No symptoms I noticed, but they cut it out eventually.
I really appreciate all the responses from everyone so much. Thanks for being willing to share this part of your lives, and I hope everything that can go right when dealing with these things goes right in the future for all of you.
I sneezed, they ruptured, I bled a lot.
Mine were spotted in a random ultrasound. The doctor was hyper flippant about it as if it was the most normal thing ever and told me to lose weight without explaining WHY that would make a difference if at all. They were causing severely irregular periods – so I was prescribed Metformin for a while. Periods did regularize but metformin brought prolonged GI issues and so I had to stop that.
What I should have been told is the critical link between sugar intake, obesity and multiple ovarian follicles developing simulataneously. I got that detail some 15 years later while reading Secret life of Fat by Sylvia Tara and going through egg retrieval
Worst pain ive ever experianced.
Had an 11cm cystadenoma, needed a laparotomy
One of mine popped on its own and it felt like I got shot. But I’m still happy it did that instead of having to be surgically removed.
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I didn’t know I had one until it ruptured, I went to emergency in 8/10 pain.. I thought my IUD got displaced turns out I had a cyst. No blood but the free fluid filled my abdominal cavity and was very uncomfortable/painful for several days after. This just happened about 2 weeks ago, definitely most pain I’ve ever experienced. I pray I never get one ever again
I had one when I was 19. They thought I had appendicitis. They went in and looked at it with a laparoscope. They said “you have a cyst on your ovary”. They did nothing for it and it eventually resolved on its own. It was very painful though.
W at to many horrible experiences. We very period our every other since I was about 15, got my first period at 11, I was in excruciating pain with high fever vomiting and diarrea and with extremely extremely heavy periods and it lasted days and couldn’t eat and barely drank water. I have always been told I have a very high tolerance to pain, but I was me barely able to stand let alone walk. My dad treated me like shit for it, “woman go through this all the time, you need to suck it up!”. It was always a fight trying to say it wasn’t normal to get that sick and be in that much pain and have that amount of blood, but he didn’t care and want even thinking about fact he knew I can get broken bones without crying or throwing a fuss. I still think my dad is trash all these years later. Doctors didn’t seem to care or be concerned. Way to many times of going to the ER because of the pain and dehydration and nobody seemed to care about finding the cause even though i was pretty regular at going in and it was a known cause related to reproduction.
By the time I was in my late teens/ very early 20’s I was at the point it wouldn’t take much more of anything before I’d be grabbing one of my pistols and going for a hike and never come home. I went to planned parenthood to see if they could help me, since no other doctors cared to investigate and these doctors do a lot with womans health. They saved my life. Instantly they knew, or were fairly certain, what was going on and ordered sonogram or something to look at my ovaries and there was my answer. I was getting massive cysts that were constantly bursting and dumping all those toxins into my body every month and maybe if get lucky and it be every other. They gave me birth control to see if that helped and said constantly take the active pills and not to mess with inactive, just constantly use active pills every day and dumb the rest. My life changed then. After some years I got an implant to not mess with pills anymore. In the last 15 years or however long it’s been since going in to planned parent hood and I’ve rarely gotton a period since, maybe 10, and only 2 times since have I had cysts rupture but they weren’t as severe when it happened.
I had three that ruptured between my teens and mid 20s. That means I had a bunch more that didn’t that I never knew about. Every so often I could feel the fullness and “tugging” sensation to one side and knew it was a cyst. They seem to have calmed waaaay down in my 30s.
I’m a sonographer now because of my ovarian cysts. I love my job. Thanks cysts!
One of mine burst a few months ago. Doubled over in pain, puking, nausea. It was awful.
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Back in may of this year, my period lasted longer than normal. After a couple of weeks, I grew very concerned and went to the ER. They did an ultrasound and found a cyst on one of my ovaries but told me they didn’t think it was related. I scheduled an appointment with my gynecologist and continued to have my period for 35 days until I saw her and was prescribed something to stop it. She looked at my ultrasound and told me that she thought that my long period was indeed caused by my cyst. The meds she prescribed stopped working so I tried a birth control but then was spotting for several months. Switched birth controls and am finally back to normal. I had another ultrasound and was told the cyst went away on its own. I had no pain or anything, the only thing off was my period. To this day, I wonder if I get off the pill if I’ll have another extended period… but I did a papsmear and everything came out normal so I don’t know.
I had a relatively large one (the size of a billiard ball or so?) on one of my ovaries and felt absolutely zero symptoms. I found out when I was getting an ultrasound for something else and it was a pretty easy decision to get it out before anything happened. It was a dermoid cyst, turns out the little guy had a tooth or something resembling a tooth and hair (I got to see the pictures! unfortunately, I didn’t get to keep it).
I had a couple of near-bursts and twisted ovaries that led to the most mind-numbing pain of my life, but was under-diagnosed for a long time because my pain threshold is really high.
Eventually it led me to the ER in 2017, I was 32 back then. The doctor I saw didn’t take my pain seriously, hooked me on acetaminophen IV (the equivalent of laughing at my face, let’s be honest) and refused to get me an ultrasound. She decided it was an UTI, and sent me on my merry way with broad spectrum one shot antibiotics.
A few weeks later, my GP booked me for an ultrasound and it was the most terrifying experience of my life. For twenty something minutes the technician was dead silent while performing the procedure, until he looked at me, and told me I needed emergency CT scan because there was a massive mass in my abdomen, the size of a volley ball.
As a French citizen, I had the chance to pick a private clinic covered by my healthcare for the CT scan and from that point on, it went so much better. It showed a 25+ cm cyst on my left ovary that was pressing over my entire abdominal cavity and effectively endangered my life.
Things went really fast after that. I was treated as pre cancerous because chances were dead high my cyst was “borderline”. I saw a cancer nurse, then the anesthesiologist and the surgeon who told me I would get a complete laparotomy, meaning open abdominal surgery from my rib cage to my bikini line. This was a lot to handle, and I had a moment of total blur while trying to process it all. My surgeon was both a great doctor and a really shitty human being because when I asked for my other ovary to also be removed due to high risk of a cyst popping up there, and told him I was a child free lesbian, he frowned and told me “what if you meet a man that wants to have kids ?”. I was so emotionally fragile I didn’t say anything, but I really wanted to let him know no penis would ever get inside that vagina of mine.
Surgery happened in mid-December 2017. I was supposed to spend 5 days in ICU, ten days overall hospitalised. I had a spinal IV for painkillers, which was, honestly, nothing, I didn’t even feel the numbing injection when they put the catheter in. Surgery went smoothly, the post-ablation analysis showed no cancer cells, just good old cyst juice (sorry for the graphic image).
I wanted to try walking ten hours after surgery, which I did, and less than 24 hours after, I was strolling around the ICU unit with my wires and IV, but post-surgery was honestly… a breeze ? I found myself to be kind of a warrior, and was out of the hospital three days after my surgery, which, not gonna lie, I am kind of proud of. I didn’t know such a fighter was living inside of me, and meeting her in these troubled circumstances was a good surprise.
My only issue after I left the hospital was that the self-absorbing stitches (30 !) got swallowed way, way too quickly by my immune system, and I had to have them re-done twice. But aside from that, things went so well. I didn’t really take painkillers beside the first couple of days, and though the scar is kind of ugly and massive, I can’t complain. It could have gone so much worse.
8 years later I now have to get another CT scan because *guess what*… my left ovary is being a dick (pun intended). I am not as scared as I was in 2017 because I am getting the same team, and will gladly tear the surgeon a new one because I was right, but still… this sucks. I hate that I had to fight so much and that I was gaslit by men *and* women. I will most likely advocate for myself in a far more aggressive way now, because I am tired of being treated as medicine’s afterthought, but it really is emotionally draining.
Feels like being stabbed like a hot, searing knife for a few seconds and then its over. Alarming though.
Ive only had one really bad episode that was extreamly painful and lasted a few days.. I should have gone to hospital but didnt
I have them about once a year. Extreeeeeme pain, almost can’t stand up or speak. Have to remind myself to breathe kind of pain. But for me that pain always resolves within an hour or two. Usually by then I’m at urgent care worried it’s my appendix. Annoying but no torsion or anything too bad yet.