Thursday, August 12, 2004
Too Much Information
Went to the gynecologist today…
*clears the room*
my yearly appointments are in the Fall but I was desperate to change my birth control. I’ve been on this new delivery system that uses the same hormones as the Pill but at a lower dose - because it doesn’t have to be digested. Nuvo Ring (it’s like a jelly bracelet, but not). Initially I was psyched to not have to swallow a pill because I’ve been dependant on Prevacid for about 5 years now. Not having to take a another pill and risk my frustrating stomach is nice, let’s leave it at that.
All was lovely but as time passed, my pms changed, over the last 6 or so months really gotten out of control. Physically it’s fine (naturally i’m that girl, white with pain, who has to go home and curl into a little ball) but um, these new symptoms are not feeling blue, not irritability. It is despair. It is anxiety that makes me shake, paranoia, vomiting, can’t eat, can’t sleep, don’t want to talk to anyone. I scare me. It takes me over.
And it happens like clockwork, which is good, much better than a constant thing. It rears it’s head about 1.5-2 weeks before my period and then chills a little. Then the Friday/Saturday a few days before it comes: I am Taken Out. I am possessed. I am miserable and want to die from my life. While in that state a part of me knows I just have to wait it out. But I can’t take it anymore. It’s not me. It feels like getting your heart broken by the whole world, or whoever is your whole world. And the worst part is I know it’s irrational, I know it’s not real, but I am not able to feel or act differently. I lose faith in everything, especially myself.
And frankly, faith in myself is all I got. Normally I’m a weeble wobble. I don’t fall down.
I want to call people and say “I was never like this was I?” Or the guys I used to live with or date and ask, “I just used to get clumsy and bake when I pms’d right? That’s all? Was I insane?”
My step dad was an ob/gyn. He explained to me when I was a young lass that pms is really women going through withdrawal. Our estrogen levels drop and we are left with testosterone and progesterone - only male hormones. Thus the bad attitude and the increased sex drive. Funny…
That doesn’t seem to be only it with this, perhaps after 10 or so years on these hormones my body’s not happy. Why would this delivery system make a difference? But the timing of it, the extreme regularity (it’s even a certain time on fridays I can feel the black cloud moving in, like the real storm we had yesterday). So rather than experience that one more time I got myself in gear and found a doctor in NYC. He’s a nice older man, I wanted the woman but she was booked through November so not an option for me. I was just planning on a consultation though, please please god let him write me an Rx for something else. Plan A: change Rx, Plan B: stop taking any Rx for month and see, Plan C: Punishing amounts of exercise, Plan D: throw knives at wall until I’m spent? My new doctor is with me as far as Plan B so that’s cool.
He handed me 6, SIX, six free months of a new prescription, saving me $300 dollars, that has less progesterone and might be different enough that I don’t feel like I walk down the street like a runway model… unsmiling, feet hitting the ground too hard, sick to my stomach and over the entire world.
So, we’ll see how this month goes. I start the new pack tonight and hope. If that doesn’t work, I’ll go off totally and hope.
In some circles I used to be introduced as “sunshine”. I need to get that girl back. Anybody ever have this? so damned weird and terrible.
Page 1 of 1 pages
