Endo Month, Day No. 6: Stabilize This

My OB/GYN and I met in January to talk about the continuing weirdness that is my cycle. I’ve had some odd changes since my surgery in 2010, including PMS like I literally have never had before (including serious irritability) and shorter, still irregular cycles. She seems to feel my remaining ovary may be struggling since the oophorectomy, and that I need to go back to the reproductive specialist to check my hormones again, and for more Clomid or stronger tests. (Happy new year!)

But beyond needing to go back for fertility tests, it came down to two management options: try a new birth control and try to tame the symptoms, or be prescribed a mood stabilizer so I wouldn’t care as much during my period.

Wait a minute. My options are pill, or … pill?

Choose carefully. But both will eff you up.

I wasn’t keen on adding another medication to my list, so I opted for Lo-LoEstrin Fe, the tiniest of the minipills available to date, even though taking progestin-only pills never helped me before.

It strikes me as odd that those would be the only options, or that a mood stabilizer would even be offered in an “either or” situation. She didn’t name any potential medications and I haven’t taken time to look them up.

I’m working on my third month on the birth control so I’m waiting to fully judge it until I’ve finished the 3-month trial, but it hasn’t really affected me yet so I’m not expecting any miracles. On the plus side, I’m not throwing up all the time, so there’s always a silver lining.

For some reason it kinda pissed me off that the mood stabilizer would even be offered. (Maybe that means I should have taken it.) You really have no more options for me, Medicine? It’s come down to just trying to keep me from bitching about how bad I feel as a management technique?

But perhaps I’m reading too much into this. What say you, Internets? Have you taken mood stabilizers, or would you?

Day 30: Estrogen doesn’t help anything

Finally getting some energy back … thankfully! However, that doesn’t prevent the weird sleep schedule. That’s going to be a beast to get rid of, as 4 a.m. has become the new bedtime. And one of my crazy neighbors has a rooster that crows around that time, which has me totally boggled as well as slightly irritated. He’s become my 4 a.m. alarm.

Talked with Amazing PCOS Doctor (APD) last week about my crazy terrible moon, finally. He seemed rather concerned about how bad it had been but there wasn’t much to do as far as changing the pill cycle because the moon had just ended. The headaches are also bothersome. He’s attempting to counteract that with putting me on low-dose estrogen instead of my placebo pills, since the combination pill I’m on now is actually not doing me any harm. I haven’t realized it til now, but I haven’t been throwing up. Or totally crazy. Or depressed. Hot damn. This might work!

Except, of course, for the heavy, crippling periods and increased migraines.

Which leads to another thought … anybody on Microgestin ever have difficulty sleeping?

This would of course be perfectly timed with having to drive across the state for required doula certification this week. I start the estrogen on Wednesday and have to drive 3 hours after leaving work around 9 on Thursday night. Apparently I have to space out when I take codeine and the estrogen by three hours, but the pharmacy didn’t say why. This should be interesting.

Day 20: Surprise!

Don’t you love surprises?

Nah, me neither.

Today was my first day off of a three day weekend, but I had plenty to do. I’ve been feeling slightly off — headaches, sore chest, pelvic pain, other issues — but I can chalk all those up to a new birth control, change of seasons and stress, what with the rough week behind me, including a big pay cut for all the company’s employees and having a bad “relationship talk” and planning for my upcoming doula workshop. Plus, with Walk for Freedom on Sunday and me trying to sell the shirts (you want one?), naturally I’m stressed.

But today seemed an OK day. I did a great job at urban ballet on Thurdsay night and can really feel the difference as my body quickly returns to some form of fitness. I spent the day with my client and friend J, whose baby I will help deliver in August, as well as her boyfriend, Se, and her two beautiful, funny sons. After lunch at an Indian buffet (the little ones love that palak paneer), we carpooled to St. Augustine to visit her midwife (a doula’s role is to support, after all, and I can use all the contacts I can get) and spent most of the day in a welcoming home, talking babies and ordering raspberry leaves in bulk for comfort tea and watching J’s BF and the midwife’s husband perform an impromptu drum circle while the boys, ages 6 and 3, danced and drummed and the midwife’s young daughter, 8 months, bounced feverishly and nommed my fingers.

But on the way home, I started feeling a twisting cramp that came and went suddenly. J noticed; I just told her I was having a bad day. She understands and supports me; so does her BF. But it was one of those pains where it erases any other intention you have and you feel suddenly and solidly justified in canceling all your plans to go home and curl up like a pill bug. But J and I also take a belly dancing class at one of the local universities and both missed last week’s class, so as soon as we got me back to my car, I went straight to the university to get changed and ready for class while J and company got themselves sorted.

I should have known something was up when I called four people in rapid succession because I somehow couldn’t remember how to get to the university from where I was and left increasingly panicked/angry messages for all my friends. (I got there perfectly, without directions, and half an hour early.) And when I went to the bathroom to change into my dance clothes … SURPRISE! My period.

“Irrational fury” is the only way I can describe my reaction. Thankfully I was alone in the ladies room, but I found myself having to use an o.b. because I was caught off guard and didn’t have my Diva Cup. I’ll talk more about o.b. vs. Diva Cup in another post. But of course I was surprised — I only ended my moon 12 days ago, putting me on a 20-day cycle when I’m used to at least 30 these days!

Hurting, shocked and hating my body, I really threw myself into the class. I felt so good after the first class; at the start of this one, I could barely stand up, so this one didn’t have the same effect. However, I was really “angry zen” about it, so I excelled at the routines and am pleased to be getting some of my previous talent back.

Sigh. If nothing else, at least this explains why it physically hurt too much to do some of the abdominal exercises at ballet on Thursday and why I’ve been feeling so rotten lately. But did it have to happen the same weekend as I’m leading a charity walk?!

Day 18: Where should it end?

I am in a strange mood. I feel very puffy and “full” all over, my breasts are sore and I am having pelvic pain. Sounds like the magic new BC is going to throw me into a cycle sooner rather than later. Ugh.

I was thinking of other ways to describe and advertise Endo Sucks! today. This very blog was mentioned as an example of using social media to benefit business in a seminar I attended yesterday, though I don’t think that will necessarily drive up the traffic. Still, it’s good to know Endo Sucks! was catchy enough to stay in his mind!

But today is one of those days where I’m bouncing back and forth on what my future may hold, reproductively-speaking. My grandmother had endo but also had the benefit of an insanely high threshhold for pain. My mom had endo and a radical hysterectomy when she was 20 years old (I was a newborn at the time). And now I have endo and PCOS. At what point does it stop? Shouldn’t the cycle stop with me, because I know better? Every time I say that, people harass me about it. “Everybody has their shit,” they say. “If nobody had kids because of bad genes, there wouldn’t be people on this earth!”

Am I the only one who doesn’t think that argument is enough to coerce me into bearing children who I might have to look in the face — their tear-stained, panicked face as they’re doubled over in pain they didn’t ask for — and explain that I knew they’d probably have it, but I was hoping for the best?

In good news: Picked up the shirts for Walk for Freedom today! They look great. I’ll post a picture ASAP. My big worry is that I won’t feel up to the walk; my bigger worry is that the people who’ve said they’re coming won’t attend! I always panic, but I think this is going to turn out really well. (I hope.)

Still haven’t heard back from Amazing PCOS Doctor (APD). I can’t tell if my headaches are more frequent because of the birth control or because the weather is shifting into spring/summer rainy time. Either way, it does indeed suck.

Day 16: WTF, doc?

Did a little research late last night on Microgestin. Some of the side effects and contraindications are big “duh” listings, including depression and nausea. (Check and check for my side effects!)

It also lists confusion, slurring of speech, cramping and bleeding among its many, many potential side effects (the first two are new, but I haven’t been a health care worker in a long time). But it dawned on me that hey, there’s a lot of contraindications when it comes to your liver, and I was told to never take iron again back when I was in college (it caused my liver functions to spike and I had to stop taking multivitamins). And hey, jackass me, the pill is called Microgestin Fe. Hmmph.

And then, incredibly, it also lists migraines and endometriosis as probable contraindications to taking this BC. Migraines and endometriosis! Check and check … and check please.

Now, this prescription comes courtesy of my Amazing PCOS Doc, so I gotta trust him on this one. But being my own advocate has to come first. Guess who’s getting a phone call from me first thing in the morning?

It never hurts to ask…

Day 15: No control over birth control

Well, things were going really well until today.

I started Microgestin Fe 1/20 (brand name: Loestrin) on Wednesday and made it five whole days without nausea, bleeding, vomiting, or any real side effects (big yay). On Saturday, I did have a lot of moodiness despite working out, as well as a headache when I woke up today, but I can have “down periods” like every other person, plus that is a (usually) temporary side effect of birth control, so I am barely counting that in my side effects column. Plus, I’ve already noticed a decrease in appetite, which is always a plus in my opinion since the pendulum usually swings the other way.

And then, all of a sudden … Blah Time.