TV presenter Yvette Fielding: 'I've had my womb removed to end my agonising periods'

By Olivia Buxton
Updated: 18:35 EST, 12 January 2009

There's hardly a woman on earth who hasn't suffered from period pains at some point in her life. For the most it's nothing more than a mild ache. Others might need a painkiller to ease the abdominal cramps. But for 15 per cent of women the pain is so debilitating it affects their daily lives and even their ability to sleep.

TV presenter Yvette Fielding was one of those women. 'Every month, for a whole week, the pain was atrocious, spreading all the way down my thighs,' she says. 'Often, all I could do was take strong painkillers and go to bed for two days.'

Yvette tried taking the progestogen-only pill and the combined oral contraceptive pill (the standard way of treating the symptoms), but this simply made her heavier  -  and depressed.

Yvette Fielding with husband Karl

Finally, after 20 years of living with crippling pains, Yvette, 40, decided to have a hysterectomy. Though it certainly seems a drastic solution, she describes it as 'life-transforming'. 'It's brilliant,' she says. 'I feel like a new person and I've got all this renewed energy.'

One in 20 women aged 30-49 consults their GP every year complaining of heavy uterine bleeding.

Heavy periods are often caused by a hormonal imbalance leading up to the menopause. They can also occur as a result of endometriosis (where womb-like tissue forms elsewhere in the body), or fibroids (benign tumours which develop in the uterus wall).

But most common is dysfunctional uterine bleeding (DUB)  -  where there is no apparent explanation  -  which is what Yvette had. The problem first when the TV presenter, who joined Blue Peter at 18, reached her 20s.

'They became increasingly bad throughout my 20s, but were especially awful after my daughter Mary was born nine years ago,' says Yvette, who is married to cameraman Karl Beattie, 45, and also has a son, William, 14.

Trying treatments... and painkillers

Unlike normal periods that can last as little as two or three days, mine lasted for a week. It was very heavy for five days, then would tail off for the last two days.

'Doctors prescribed different contraceptive pills to try to help, but all they seemed to do was make me put on weight. At one time in my mid-30s, I ballooned from 9st to 11st. I had terrible mood swings, too, and got so depressed that in the end I stopped taking them.'

During the week of her period, Yvette always carried spare clothes because the bleeding was so heavy.

Fifteen months ago, her GP prescribed Cyklokapron, a non-hormonal tablet which can reduce the heaviness of the bleeding by increasing the formation of clots.

But this made no difference; in fact Yvette became anaemic. 'I felt tired, dizzy and drained because I would often have one night of no sleep  -  the pain was that bad.

'I had to try to plan filming around the time of my period, but it wasn't always possible. I had no choice then but to dose myself with strong painkillers on those days.

The problem finally came to a head last January when Yvette, best known for presenting the Living channel's ghost series, Most Haunted, found she couldn't change the filming dates.

'My friend Liz found me crying in the toilet. "You have got to sort this out," she told me. "This is ruining your life."

'Liz herself had suffered from heavy periods, and when she was 50 she had a hysterectomy. It changed her life dramatically.'

Yvette returned to her GP, who unsympathetically suggested she should go away and 'live with it'.

'I burst into tears,' recalls Yvette. 'When I spoke to my husband we agreed that I needed to see a specialist. Suffice to say, I changed my GP after that, too.'

Time for drastic action

Last April, Yvette saw consultant gynaecologist Clive Spence-Jones at the London Clinic in Harley Street. He first prescribed Norethisterone  -  progestogen-only pills  -  to reduce the blood loss.

When the progestogen hormone falls below a certain level in the body, the lining of the uterus is shed and a woman has her period. By taking norethisterone tablets, the lining of the uterus remains until the tablet is stopped.

'Despite my past experiences, I was willing to give them a go and they did work to an extent. I bled a lot less and my period pains weren't nearly as bad. But although some women can be on the tablets for two years and be fine, after only a month, I started to suffer with terrible hot sweats at night and developed bad acne.

'They tested me to see if I was going through early menopause, but I wasn't. The symptoms were a side-effect of taking the tablets.'

Mr Spence-Jones explained the other options. Yvette could have an endometrial resection  -  a procedure where the lining of the womb is scraped or treated with laser, which usually leads to much lighter periods  -  or a hysterectomy.

Yvette opted for a hysterectomy. Each year in the UK 40,000 hysterectomies are performed, with heavy periods (menorrhagia) being the most common reason.

'Karl and I had decided we didn't want any more children, and although some women feel a hysterectomy takes away part of their womanhood I didn't feel any attachment to my womb at all.'

Yvette considered having a complete hysterectomy, where the cervix, uterus and ovaries are removed  -  this is the most common type  -  but Mr Spence-Jones recommended a partial hysterectomy, removing the upper part of the uterus and leaving the cervix and ovaries in place.

'He explained that retaining the ovaries reduces the risk of osteoporosis because they produce oestrogen that helps to build strong bones. Although my ovaries would still produce eggs, they'd dissolve into the abdomen every month.

'Also, removing my ovaries would have kick-started the menopause and I'd need to take hormone replacement therapy to avoid symptoms like hot flushes. I didn't want that to happen.'

So last November, seven weeks after her 40th birthday, Yvette had the two-hour operation  -  which was filmed for a documentary to be aired next week.

'When I came round, I was very sick because of the painkillers,' she recalls. 'The following morning the nurses got me out of bed. I shuffled along the corridor  -  I must have looked like Mrs Overall from Acorn Antiques  -  but they said it was vital to get me moving to help improve my circulation and avoid the risk of blood clots.

'Apparently, the tissue is always sent to a lab to be analysed, and it turned out I did have a small benign fibroid. They said it would have contributed towards my heavy periods, but would not have been the cause of it.'

Liberated and in control

A week after she was discharged from hospital, Yvette had to go back because the heavy bleeding hadn't stopped.

'I was warned that you can have light bleeding for three to four weeks, but I had heavy bleeding for four weeks. It turned out I had a minor infection, and medication cleared things up within a day.

During this time Yvette was unable to lift anything heavier than a kettle. Nor was she allowed to drive.

'I'm a real petrolhead and Karl bought me a Porsche for my 40th birthday, but it was sat on the driveway winking at me. It was so frustrating,' she sighs.

'By the third week, I started doing some gentle exercise, and I walked our dogs every day. This helped prevent any weight gain, which can happen when you have a hysterectomy because of a slowed metabolism.'

Six weeks after the operation, Yvette was given the all-clear. One of the side-effects of having a hysterectomy is reduced libido; hers was not affected.

Having made a swift recovery, Yvette is now presenting a seven-day run of Most Haunted: Live. She is also filming another TV series, and is writing a children's book about ghosts.

'I feel so liberated  -  it's fantastic,' she says. 'Some women find it hard to come to terms with the loss of their womb  -  even if they're not planning to have any more children. Other women feel much happier because the problem they had is gone.

'By allowing cameras to follow my operation, I hope it will help others to see that a hysterectomy is not such a scary thing.

'Since the operation I feel more in charge of my own body. I'm going to live my life how I want it to be, and not how my body dictates it. It's like I've won a mini battle between me and my womb. I'm so pleased I did it.'

• Most Haunted Live: The Search For Evil, 8pm, on Living this week until Friday. In Bed With Yvette & Karl starts on Saturday at 9pm on Living.

• www.hysterectomyassociation.org.uk