The unknown unknowns
Sep. 17th, 2015 19:20![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
torquillThere are times, when I'm battling the queasiness and the depression and all those symptoms which only go away when I take a specific supplement... there are times that I worry that there's something seriously life-threatening going on. They did all the usual tests, but what if they missed something? Doctors do miss serious stuff. Some of the firsthand accounts I've read lately don't ease my anxiety on that score.
I'm mollified a little by the fact that my mom had something similar at an earlier age, and she's made it into her (healthy) early 70s... but I still worry. A pituitary tumor, or something in my liver screwing up my P450 pathway so that I make too much aromatase, or an estrogen-producing tumor somewhere else... I don't know.
I don't know. And that's what makes it so scary.
It's been 82 days since I had a real period. After having a clockwork cycle -- to the point where it refused to be disrupted even when I *tried* -- to have two cycles of OMG bleeding and then this limbo is disorienting. I understand that birth control can play merry hell with cycles, but as I said, my cycle used to be bulletproof, no matter what I did. On BC, off BC, messing with dosages, trying to eliminate every other period so I could get a break from the PMS... it was like the tide, it was so regular and so hard to affect. It came on even while I was deliberately trying to stop it.
I've been told I should spend six months off of BC to reset things. At least I can manage the symptoms now, but I'm six weeks in and nothing has changed. Shouldn't it? We're not talking a shortened cycle or mid-cycle spotting here, we're talking effective menopause. Zero state. My signaling hormones have gone on vacation. And the only time I get relief is when I medicate my estrogen levels down to a normal range.
It's all the same as it was the last time I groused about this, but that's the source of my frustration. Every so often I have to scream and stomp up and down about how I still have no explanation and no plan. God knows what I'm going to do if the next gynecologist throws up her hands... Find another in-house gyno to take a look? Petition for an out-of-system referral to my mom's excellent troubleshooter? Give up? I don't know.
I just don't know.
I'm mollified a little by the fact that my mom had something similar at an earlier age, and she's made it into her (healthy) early 70s... but I still worry. A pituitary tumor, or something in my liver screwing up my P450 pathway so that I make too much aromatase, or an estrogen-producing tumor somewhere else... I don't know.
I don't know. And that's what makes it so scary.
It's been 82 days since I had a real period. After having a clockwork cycle -- to the point where it refused to be disrupted even when I *tried* -- to have two cycles of OMG bleeding and then this limbo is disorienting. I understand that birth control can play merry hell with cycles, but as I said, my cycle used to be bulletproof, no matter what I did. On BC, off BC, messing with dosages, trying to eliminate every other period so I could get a break from the PMS... it was like the tide, it was so regular and so hard to affect. It came on even while I was deliberately trying to stop it.
I've been told I should spend six months off of BC to reset things. At least I can manage the symptoms now, but I'm six weeks in and nothing has changed. Shouldn't it? We're not talking a shortened cycle or mid-cycle spotting here, we're talking effective menopause. Zero state. My signaling hormones have gone on vacation. And the only time I get relief is when I medicate my estrogen levels down to a normal range.
It's all the same as it was the last time I groused about this, but that's the source of my frustration. Every so often I have to scream and stomp up and down about how I still have no explanation and no plan. God knows what I'm going to do if the next gynecologist throws up her hands... Find another in-house gyno to take a look? Petition for an out-of-system referral to my mom's excellent troubleshooter? Give up? I don't know.
I just don't know.
no subject
Date: 2015-09-18 16:17 (UTC)