Lena Dunham Shares Graphic Hospital Photo After Undergoing Surgery

Girls creator Lena Dunham recently shared a graphic hospital photo after undergoing surgery to have her left ovary removed.

The actress posted the photo to Instagram and included a message about the procedure. (Below is a cropped version of the photo. For the full photo see Dunham’s Instagram page.)

“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,” Dunham’s caption began. “Over the last month it got worse and worse until I was simply a burrito posing as a human.”

“My mother took this picture after I spent 9 hours in the post op recovery area with [very] low blood pressure, the nurses were diligently monitoring,” she later added. “I was so out of it that I thought I looked sensually moody a la Charlotte Rampling (turns out it was more of a constipation vibe.)”

The actress received quite a significant response to the photo, prompting her to add to the caption.

“A lot of people commented on my last post about being too sick to finish promoting my show 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!)” Dunham wrote in the update. “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.”

“I feel blessed creatively and tickled by my new and improved bellybutton and so so so lucky to have health insurance as well as money for care that is off my plan,” she continued. “But I’m simultaneously shocked by what my body is and isn’t doing for me and red with rage that access to medical care is a privilege and not a right in this country and that women have to work extra hard just to prove what we already know about our own bodies and beg for what we need to be well. It’s humiliating.”

“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 shit scars and mesh ‘panties’ are the f—ing jam,” she finally concluded her post. “Join me, won’t you?“

Dunham appeared in 2017s American Horror Story: Cult, and will be seen next in the Quentin Tarantino film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.