Actress Marsai Martin is opening up concerning the “debilitating ache” she skilled earlier than having a “grapefruit-sized” ovarian cyst eliminated.

The 18-year-old Black-ish alum penned an op-ed for Girls’s Well being the place she bought candid about her analysis and choice to bear surgical procedure to take away the cyst. She went in depth after first sharing her “scary well being expertise” throughout an Instagram Reside session in December 2022.

“I had been identified with an ovarian cyst 4 years earlier, and at last, at 18, I made a decision to have a surgical procedure to take away it and relieve the ache I used to be experiencing,” Martin defined.

The Little star recalled how tough it was to seek out data on-line about ovarian cysts “or first-person accounts from individuals I might relate to,” she wrote.

“I used to be scared after receiving my analysis,” Martin confessed. “As a younger Black girl, I needed to listen to from ladies who seemed like me that I used to be going to be okay”

After studying concerning the elevated challenges ladies of coloration face relating to their reproductive well being, “I got here to appreciate that I might be that voice for individuals and fill that void,” Martin shared. It’s what prompted her Instagram Reside session and her current op-ed.

“I needed to share my expertise in order that different ladies wouldn’t endure in silence,” she wrote. “Earlier than my analysis, I believed the crippling interval ache and extreme nausea I went by means of every month throughout my cycle was regular. So, I resisted going to the ER for my interval ache for years.”

Martin continued. “And if I hadn’t sought out assist, I in all probability would have continued attempting to powerful it out. I might have continued to undergo intense, debilitating ache each month throughout my interval.”

She recalled being simply 14 when her physician situated a cyst 9.5 centimeters in diameter that they in comparison with the scale of “a small grapefruit.” After being referred to a gynecologist who prescribed her medicine to “really feel higher,” Martin says the “ache ultimately progressed to the purpose the place something that went down — water, meals, medicine — would come again up.”

She in the end determined to bear surgical procedure to have the cyst eliminated. However grew extra nervous main as much as the process.

“I’ve main anxiousness, and I didn’t understand how my physique would react to the surgical procedure and anesthesia,” she wrote.

After eradicating the cyst, Martin says her interval pains “are manner higher,” and the slight cramps she feels could be helped with medicine. She hopes to encourage different ladies who is likely to be ignoring the ache to get assist from a medical skilled and get a second opinion if want be.

“I hope my story will encourage different ladies to not settle for a lifetime of ache, to get a second opinion,” she mentioned.

“Ache will not be regular. I need different ladies to speak about their ache, and to maintain talking out till they’re taken severely. And to the ladies on the market struggling silently proper now: You owe it to your self to talk up.”