KATE Garraway is left stunned at the astonishing reason why a woman has been suffering three-week periods in her new documentary.
Airing this evening, Your Body Uncovered brings people face-to-face with incredible images of their bodies and conditions.
It gives patients vital answers to what has been ailing them, with experts offering advice on what they can do next.
Tonight's episode on BBC2 features Hilda, who has been suffering with fibroids for years.
Recently her stomach ballooned and her symptoms have become "extreme" – often bleeding heavily for three weeks in a month.
She tearfully tells how it impacts her life and has ruined her love of fashion as she has become so self -onscious of her growing abdomen.
Your Body Uncovered shows people with chronic conditions what is actually going on in their body – using incredible imaging techniques made from scans.
Kate tells the patient's stories, watches on while they discover more and is there for moral support through it all.
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In the first episode Hilda is shown an image of her uterus. Compared to a healthy organ, hers is staggeringly large – 40 per cent bigger and takes up most of her abdomen.
The 40-year-old reveals strangers sometimes congratulate her on pregnancy and claim she is glowing – when in reality she was in enormous pain.
Kate, sitting with Hilda's best friend, becomes emotional seeing what she has been living with.
They tear up realising how much she has literally been carrying around, when faced with the reality of what her illness looks like.
It is revealed she has an incredible 100 fibroids, of varying sizes, jostling for room in her body.
An equally stunned Mr Stephen Quinn, a consultant gynaecologist, explains he only sees cases like this once or twice a year.
Hilda, who calls the fibroids "monster", takes a moment to process the sight before saying: "The graphic reality of what's sitting inside my belly, is shocking.
'IT'S SCARY'
"Having seen the normal one and mine, it's like an inflated balloon. I hadn't expected it to be that big, it's scary."
Dr Guddi Singh, the expert on hand for the show, tells her the fibroid mass is actually nearly the same size as a newborn.
Hilda becomes tearful explaining how it has changed her life – with such heavy bleeding and agonising pain, and the near constant need for the loo as her bladder is so squashed.
She says: "To me it's normal, but it's not normal. My life has adjusted around the condition, but that shouldn't be the case."
Dr Guddi said: "Hilda had one of the worst cases of fibroids that even her surgeon had ever seen.
"My mouth literally dropped when we were treated to augmented reality image of what it would look like to have all her fibroids lined up in a row."
Your Body Uncovered:
IN this ground-breaking series, Kate Garraway meets patients with everyday medical conditions and together with Dr Guddi Singh, guides them through an immersive journey inside their own bodies to help better understand their illness.
The medical world is something Kate knows well. During the pandemic, she was thrust into it when her husband Derek developed Covid. She’s experienced the frustration of not fully understanding what is happening inside the human body.
26 million people in the UK have a long-term medical condition. For many, those conditions feel hidden inside their body, invisible to the naked eye. But now, with incredible new technology, we show our patients what is happening to them, so they can understand their condition better
With the latest in augmented reality, which superimposes computer-generated images onto our real view, patients are given the opportunity for a mind-blowing medical consultation.
Hilda opts for a risky surgery that could see her lose her entire womb if it goes wrong, with the results revealed at the end of the program.
Fibroids are non-cancerous growths that develop in or around the womb (uterus).
The growths are made up of muscle and fibrous tissue, and vary in size.
Many women don't know they have fibroids because they do not have any symptoms, but around 40 per cent of people at childbearing age are likely to have them.
The exact cause of fibroids is unknown, but they have been linked to the hormone oestrogen.
Oestrogen is the female reproductive hormone produced by the ovaries.
- Watch Your Body Uncovered tonight at 8pm on BBC2.
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