Hormonal HELL (My Experience of PMS)

Member Name: Otjiwarotji

Product:	My Experience of PMS
Date:	17/10/01 (493 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Absolutely NONE whatsoever

Disadvantages: Can ruin your life

I've read so many heart rending opinions on Dooyoo where I have really admired the writer, thinking I could NEVER open up like that, opinions about depression, anxiety, illness and so many subjects about which it must have been really difficult for the writer to sit down and put it all into words and thought I could never do that, I'm not brave enough, what if someone mocks me or disagrees with me, I couldn't take it I'd be mortified, what if I don't end up saying what I wanted and can't get my feelings across.

But I thought that while I was suffering from PMS, and now, at this very moment in time I'm not pre-menstrual and I know I can write about it, and I will say something useful so here I go.

Self doubt and lack of confidence is just one of the many symptoms of PMS which I have had to put up with for most of my life. Which is crazy, ask anyone who knows me to describe me and the words they will use would probably include, confident, outgoing, well organised, methodical. Ask anyone who REALLY knows me ( and there aren't many who fit into THAT category) and they would tell you a different story: unpredictable, anxiety ridden, morose, vicious, violent ... the list goes on, but, you get the picture? there are two Me's. PMS me and the real me and I never know which one I'm going to be today!

It REALLY annoys me when people say PMS is a myth, you could only ever say that if you have been lucky enough to be spared this awful condition, there are websites galore and two excellent opinions here on Doo yoo which give you all the facts, all the symptoms all the suggestions for helping with this condition, but this is my story about my personal experiences and I'll let you be the judge.

Here are MY facts:

I am 45 years old, I have no children, I have never wanted any, I'm not fit to be a mother and I have no maternal instincts. I have very few friends and sometimes I get very very l
onely. I have extremely irregular periods and I have suffered from PMS since I was 14.

When I was younger I had never even heard of PMS and it was years later that I began to see a pattern to my awful mood swings, violent turns, bouts of deep depression, anxiety and a myriad of other horrid facets of my personality which I didn't like, I grew up not liking myself and therefore other people didn't like me either. It is only in the last few years that I have really appreciated the extent PMS has played in almost ruining my life. I always thought it was just me, a flaw in my make-up, some kind of mental illness which was too awful to admit to and I became withdrawn, a bit of a loner, I daren't let people get too close for fear of what I might do to them, they wouldn't stick around when they got to know the "real" me, they never did once I had turned into witch woman in front of them. It can happen as suddenly as that you know, one minute I'd be having a great time chatting, doing all the normal things then I'd FLIP, and you just wouldn't want to be anywhere near me when that happens.

Its like a red mist that comes down over my eyes, you've heard of seeing red, well I do see red, and it can be over something as minor as laddering my tights! Oh I have all the other classic symptoms, Migraine so bad I sometimes can't see for 2 days, I get clumsy and uncoordinated, drop things, break them, trip over. I lack concentration and my work suffers. Then I get the panic attacks, suddenly I have agoraphobia, but it can come on in the middle of an enjoyable shopping trip, reducing me to a shaking, trembling tearful wreck in the middle of Marks and Sparks. But by far the worst for me is this awful, irrational, seemingly inexplicable RAGE which hits me like a hammer and makes me lash out at whoever is nearest and makes me so ASHAMED afterwards. I have physically hurt people I love and alienated so many people that now I
daren't make friends, if you don't have any you can't hurt them can you?

I am trying to be as honest and open as I can here but there are some things I have done in the past which are so awful I really can't vocalise them. It is only now that I can "blame" PMS, that doesn't excuse me from having thrown scalding hot water over my mum in an argument so trivial I can't to this day remember what it was about, or the time I crashed the car and nearly killed my partner and I, because PMS kicked in half way through a journey. I know now it's a hormonal imbalance, but for years I thought it was mental illness. Even the psychiatrist I saw when I was recovering from an overdose in hospital ( go on guess what time of the month I did that!), never for one minute suggested there might be another reason, of course the fact that I had od'd on tranquillisers prescribed by my doctor proved I was just another nutter. At one point I thought I was an alcoholic beacuse of the drunken binges where dreadful things would happen and I would lose control completely yet it was only certain times that I would over indulge and only certain times I would drink to the point of blackouts. Oh I could quote hundreds of examples and some of them are locked so deep inside they will probably never surface they just lie there festering away inside me.

Now I realise that to anyone with no direct experience of this condition or who suffers it more mildly it sounds very much as if I am making excuses for my bad behaviour, trying to blame anything and everything on my hormones, but it IS the cause. It's only in hindsight that I actually realise that nearly all the things which have made much of my life an absolute misery can be attributed to my hormonal imbalances. It is not an excuse but it is a reason and at least now I know I'm not just a BAD person. I just wish it wasn't too late to explain it all to my late Mum who must have died t
hinking she'd spawned the devils child.

My periods have never ever been regular, I was put on the contraceptive pill at age 15 to try and regulate them, and it worked, I had fairly regular periods and fairly regular PMS and for years I struggled along not knowing what it was. Then at about 28, having had one broken marriage, (guess what contributed to that) one miscarriage , 2 job losses all heavily contributed to by my "mental illness" I finally got up courage and told my doctor, who suggested I keep a diary, for a few months, which I did and hey presto, I had a name for my condition and I had a "cure", Pyridoxin, vitamin B6, to be taken for two weeks a month before my period was due. It worked, a bit, for a while. As long as I was on the pill, I knew roughly when my period was due and could take the vitamin supplement when it would be most effective, for the 2 weeks before my period. It wasn't a miracle cure but I found I was miserable rather than suicidal, crabby rather than a screamin' demon, I would shout at people instead of physically attacking them and this also made me accept that it WAS PMS. But it never went away and I never really learnt to like myself, I just existed and led a pretty normal life, at the times I was able to and shut myself away when I couldn't cope.

The hardest time came when at 35 my doctor told me I could no longer stay on the pill, well not the pill which regulates your periods anyway. He took me off it, tried me on a different contraceptive pill where you take it 28 days a month, and my periods went haywire! I found I could go as few as 10 days between periods, then go 4 months without one. Well the B6 no longer worked as I never knew what stage of my cycle I was at and if you take them all the time they no longer work. They were also no longer available on prescription and the ones I could get from the health food store just aren't strong enough. The PMS came back, it came ba
ck with claws and teeth and I NEVER knew when it was coming, this was the hardest thing ...there are lots of things you can do to lessen PMS, but they are ALL cyclical and rely on being able to predict the time in your cycle when you are ovulating usually 10 days or so before your period, but if you don't know when its coming you can't make use of any of them.
Suddenly, out of the blue, I would change like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and it would shock me and stun me because I couldn't predict when it was coming.

So instead of trying to treat the PMS, which was beginning to take over again, I lost my high powered, well paid executive job ( well I actually told them to shove it where the sun don't shine and walked out - I had PMS that day, I loved that job, it was the most successful thing I'd ever done and when my hormones calmed down I couldn't believe what I'd done, but pride wouldn't allow me to crawl back and it was unlikely they'd take back someone so unpredictable in such a position of authority), My doctor tried to treat the irregular periods he put me on a 6 month course of synthetic Oestrogen, the only trouble was these also had to be taken cyclically so I had to wait until I had a period, then take them on the tenth day after I started, take them for 21 days and then stop, wait for my period then do the same again. It didn't work in fact it made things a whole lot worse. I had a period and took these damn things as recommended, stopped taking them, had a bad bout of PMS, took all the best measures I could to lessen it and waited for the period to arrive and waited and waited for 6 weeks and ALL this time I had the symptoms of PMS, I was a wreck. Then when the period arrived it lasted a month, it was heavy and painful and I wanted to die, it was from the devil to the deep blue sea 6 weeks PMS followed by 4 weeks of pain and dizziness.

I went back again, and again and eventually my doctor had tried eve
ry trick in the book, it got to the point where when he saw me coming he visibly grimaced. I had test after test to see if the menopause was coming early, I had tests on my thyroid, my bowels and yet nothing could be explained, so he admitted defeat and referred me to a gynaecologist.

AT LAST I thought, I will finally get the help I need, and I battled through the following 18 months, alone, with no treatment but with the hope of light at the end of the tunnel ( yes I DID say 18 months) I was at the end of a l..o..n..g waiting list, well there were others far more in need of a gynaecologist than me and I ranked very low priority, after all it was ONLY womens problems!!! I began to take Oil of evening primrose and St. Johns Wort, use aromatherapy to help me relax and it has taken away only the very sharpest edge of the PMS but it still remains an overwhelming burden.

Eventually the day dawned for my appointment, I turned up early I was so sure that this specialist was going to prescribe some miracle cure. I was given an examination and a biopsy taken of my womb and ovaries (OUCH) and the specialist listened to my tale. Then he floored me with his next suggestion...
He said the only cure was for me to have a hysterectomy AND a total Oophorectomy Thats when they take EVERYTHING away ovaries, womb, fallopian tubes the lot. He said my ovaries were not working and never had functioned properly. They were only making an egg once in a while but the hormones designed to prepare the body for a pregnancy were still being manufactured and having nowhere to go were running riot round my body causing the PMS. In order to make sure I never had PMS again and no more periods I would have to have major surgery. My first reaction was that it was a good idea, after all I didn't want children ( this was also probably caused by the hormonal imbalances too)

But he then told me that if or when I had this surgery I would be thrown headlong into premature m
enopause ..... sypmtoms .... very similar to PMS and, he told me, women who have bad PMS are ofetn likely to have worse menopause symptoms, Oh and then just to crown it all he advised me that I wouldn't be able to have HRT either as I am a high cancer risk patient as both parents died of cancer relatively young.

I DID go away and think about it, I thought about little else for months, but this was 2 years ago and as I get nearer and nearer to the natural menopause I am more and more reluctant to have major surgery which nobody has been able to convince me will be worth it. I still have PMS, I still have irregular periods. I still take the vitamin supplements, I still have bouts of agoraphobia, aggression and clumsiness. I still don't have many friends which I know is a psychological block I don't think I will ever overcome, I just can't trust myself to be the kind of friend I'd want to have. I still have the option to say yes and be put on the waiting list to have my innards ripped out, but I don' t think I will. This is me, this is the way I am and always have been and I think I will just have to accept it. So if one day I suddenly write unbelieveably bitchy comments about your best ever op, you will know why, it won't stop you being upset or even hating me. thats the worst thing when you try and explain to people why you were so horrible you just get a blank look and they walk away, they can't understand, they think it's an excuse, after all it would affect all women the same and they don't act like this, or their wife has never come at them with the bread knife so they turn away.

Please leave your comments and if anyone reads this who has direct experience of something similar please e-mail me, it would be nice to know someone does understand.

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