From unbearable pain to feeling no symptoms at all, women with uterine fibroids can have vastly different experiences.

And while these growths impact a large percentage of women, health advocates say they too often go undiscussed.

That has now started to change as women share their stories, including Academy Award-winning actress,

Peter Nyongo, and tennis superstar Venus Williams.

Ali Rogan spoke with Cateria Venable,

a patient advocate and CEO of the Fibroid Foundation.

Satyria Venable, thank you so much for being here.

Thank you for inviting me.

I really appreciate it.

You yourself have experienced uterine fibroids. Tell us more about what they are and what your own

journey with them has been like. Uterine fibroids are non-cancerous growth in and around the uterus.

And the word non-cancerous is really important because a lot of people who are diagnosed don't know whether they're

cancerous or not. And what led me to this journey is I had had my third fibroid surgery. I've

had four total and I couldn't find a provider to care for me who wouldn't offer a hysterectomy.

And I lived in Chicago at the time, and I thought, if I'm living

in a major metropolitan city and I can't find a provider, what are other women experiencing?

And I just wondered why people weren't screaming from the rooftops, because until that time,

I thought that I was alone in my journey, which is another recurring theme that we hear from our community.

It's truly extraordinary how many women this affects. What do we know about any groups of women

among whom the risk is greater or the symptoms are more prominent? We know that 70 to 80 percent

of all women will be diagnosed with uterine fibroids by the age that they're 50.

And there's a misnomer that it's primarily women of African descent because we do know that women of all walks of life, all ethnicities have fibroids.

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