Lena Dunham is recovering. The Girls creator revealed that she had her left ovary surgically removed.
“Yesterday I had a two hour surgery to remove my left ovary, which was encased in scar tissue & fibrosis, attached to my bowel and pressing on nerves that made it kinda hard to walk/pee/vamp,” she wrote on Instagram on Wednesday, October 17, alongside a photo of her in “constipation vibe” in a hospital bed. “Over the last month it got worse and worse until I was simply a burrito posing as a human.”
Dunham, 32, previously revealed that she underwent a total hysterectomy in late 2017 to have her uterus and cervix removed in an attempt to end her pain from endometriosis.
“A lot of people commented on my last post about being too sick to finish promoting my show [Camping] by saying my hysterectomy should have fixed it (I mean *should* is a weird one). That I should get acupuncture and take supplements (I do). That I should see a therapist because it’s clearly psychological (year 25, y’all. These are the fruits!),” she wrote on Wednesday. “But a big lesson I’ve learned in all this is that health, like most things, isn’t linear- things improve and things falter and you start living off only cranberry juice from a sippy cup/sleeping on a glorified heating pad but you’re also happier than you’ve been in years.”
The Emmy nominee wrote that she feels “blessed creatively and tickled” by the belly-button scar she got from her ovary removal surgery. She also expressed gratitude for her health insurance before acknowledging that “medical care is a privilege and not a right” in the U.S.
“My health not being a given has paid spiritual dividends I could never have predicted and it’s opened me up in wild ways and it’s given me a mission: to advocate for those of us who live at the cross section of physical and physic pain, to remind women that our stories don’t have to look one way, our pain is our gain and oh s–t scars and mesh ‘panties’ are the f–king jam,” she concluded. “Join me, won’t you?”
After her hysterectomy, Dunham turned to her ex Jack Antonoff, whom she dated from 2012 to 2017. “Jack has been really supportive,” a source told Us Weekly exclusively in February. “They’re in constant communication and being friendly with each other. Lena is really focused on her health.”
