Yvonne Kong-Ho was on her way home from a meeting, armed with ingredients to make laksa for dinner – her children’s request.

As she headed to the MRT station, a wave of pain hit her abdomen.

“I can tell you where the pain was. There was that one point. At first, I thought it was just pain and I could get through it,” she recalled.

Menstrual cramps were nothing new to Yvonne, who had experienced them monthly since her teens. But this one felt different.

“I was breaking out in cold sweat. Something was very wrong. In the train, I couldn’t even stand straight.”

Yvonne (second from left) with her son, husband Anthony and daughter.

Despite the agony, she made dinner and tried to go to bed after popping some over-the-counter pain relief medication. But the pain became so severe that it woke her up at 1.30am.

Frightened, she went to the accident and emergency (A&E) department by herself. “I didn’t want to wake my husband up because he had to work the next day. I didn’t want to tire him.”

No relief

In hindsight, Yvonne believes she should have known this was no ordinary episode of menstrual cramps. For months before this, the cramps had been intensifying.

In an article she wrote for TODAYonline about her experience, she recounted how “the bleeding increased in quantity” each month. There were also times when, if she walked too quickly, “the world seemed to spin around”.

Her tolerance for pain is quite high, considering that she once ran 10 half-marathons in a year, goes for long hikes, does weights training and high-intensity interval training workouts. Yet the abdominal pains were so terrible it left her immobile.

In the hospital, she was in so much agony that she could not get out of the wheelchair on her own. Doctors had fears that either a cyst or her appendix had ruptured.

Scans eventually revealed that fibroids in her womb had grown so large that one had outgrown its blood supply and degenerated. She was also suffering from adenomyosis and endometriosis – abnormal growth of endometrial tissue or the lining of the womb.

Even the strongest painkiller, administered to her round-the-clock, brought her no relief.

Tears over the loss  

A consultation with her gynaecologist the next day brought even worse news.

“Consider a hysterectomy,” her doctor told her. A hysterectomy is a surgery to remove the uterus.

In addition to all the uterine anomalies, Yvonne also had a retroverted womb, where the uterus tips backwards towards the spine rather than forward. Coupled with endometriosis, the condition can result in painful menstrual periods.

Her doctor added: “There is no way you can have kids anymore.”

Yvonne had always thought two was the perfect number of children to have.

“(My doctor) promised to preserve my ovaries so that I would not go into menopause. At the time, I was considering all the pain and the state of my womb,” said Yvonne.

“To me, it was a medical procedure that would solve my problem.”

Two days later, she underwent a hysterectomy. “When my doctor opened me up, she said it was a very angry womb”.

The fibroid had been infarcted, meaning that the tissues had died from a lack of blood supply. Yvonne’s gynaecologist told her that she had seen the condition in medical books, but never in a human being.

As she was sitting in the hospital reading her clinical discharge notes, her loss hit her.

“I had lost my womb. Am I less of a woman?” she wondered as she began tearing up.

“I had thought my womb would stay with me through menopause. Now I would never be able to have children again.”

Though her family was complete, Yvonne still grieved the loss of the womb that had sustained her two children.

She knew logically that the womb was “a bad part of me and was not medically viable”. She was also happy with her two children – a 15-year-old son and a 13-year-old daughter – and did not want any more.

But to have that choice wrenched from her was unexpectedly devastating.

God’s comfort

As Yvonne wept, prayed and journaled through her grief, God comforted her.

“I asked God, ‘Who am I? What makes me a woman?’

“God told me I am not defined by the loss of a womb. He made me a woman. I am a woman.”

Then He reminded her of something else.

As long as she can remember, Yvonne had always wanted children.

“Through secondary school, I knew the names I wanted to give my children. I drew hairstyles I wanted for my daughter. I thought two would be nice.”

Ever since she was young, Yvonne always wanted to have children.

She got married at 24 to a man she met in church. Two months after the wedding, she had a papaya-sized ovarian cyst removed.

“The doctor said that one of my fallopian tubes was also stuck. Did I want to try IVF (in vitro fertilisation)? I told my gynae, ‘If my God wants me to have a child, I will have a child.’”

When she first got married, she thought she would wait a few years before starting a family. But God intervened – something she now looks back on gratefully.

But the more she researched her condition, the more she realised that “it was impossible”.

That was when she heard God’s voice: “In the middle of one night, God just said to me, ‘Close all the windows [of your Internet Explorer] and trust Me.’”

Her son was conceived naturally three months later. She had her first child a year after she was married and her daughter, also naturally, two years after that.

Yvonne is thankful for her two children, especially since they were conceived naturally despite the fact that her doctor told her the odds of that happening were slim.

“I was a very young mum. I never understood why I would have kids so early. But if God had not intervened, I would have fought for my career before I had kids.

“Given the kind of womb I had, I may not have had children if I had waited. I thank God.”

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