The time was 11 p.m.
I tossed and turned in discomfort, while trying to fall asleep after intimacy. A sharp pain swirled around my lower belly, but I thought it was only gas from the beans and a beer I had for dinner that night with my boyfriend.
An hour later, my snooze was disrupted by what felt exactly like the beginning of a vasovagal syncope episode, a type of fainting I suffer from during blood draws or sitting up too fast. Vasovagal syncope is common and generally harmless, but it’s an indication that the body is under some sort of stress.
Everything felt all too familiar: the lightheadedness, cold sweats, a violent urge to vomit… But this time, there was no obvious trigger.
I knew immediately something was very wrong, somewhere I couldn’t see or directly feel. My body quickly confirmed my hypothesis, as I fainted again within mere minutes.
Two fainting episodes back-to-back. That had never happened before.
“Call an ambulance,” I told my boyfriend when I regained consciousness. I struggled to even speak, barely coherent after throwing up and with my clammy fingers still clasping onto the trash can rim.
Two EMTs arrived 10 minutes later and swiftly hauled me onto a stretcher. The ambulance roared through empty streets, bypassed every red light, and I burst into tears (of confusion and fear). The medics rolled me into my local ER.
Multiple blood tests and 108 pelvis, transabdominal and transvaginal ultrasound images later, my ER doctor informed me of a possible ovarian cyst rupture.
Immediately, I pictured something grotesque: a tumor, an abnormal growth, a meatball Frankenstein. I was 24 years old and excessively health-conscious; how did I not know this was growing inside me, let alone it had burst?
Turns out, I probably couldn’t have known anyway.
Like an erupted, angry pimple
“Ovarian cysts are generally collections of fluid that form like a pocket within the ovary,” Kelsey Kossl, MD, a gynecologic surgeon at NYU Langone Health, tells SELF.
Although sharing the same term “cyst” with Dr. Pimple Popper‘s gnarly, gushy specialty, ovarian cysts mostly refer to naturally occurring follicles, or, in Dr. Kossl’s words, “little houses for our eggs.”
Every month, our ovaries grow 15 to 20 tiny follicles, one of which becomes dominant and can grow to two or three centimeters as part of its natural role in the menstrual cycle, per Dr. Kossl.
