Progesterone = fail
Mar. 5th, 2012 10:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
angharad_gamSo some of you may recall I mentioned last year I was going to see if progesterone (the mini-pill essentially) would help me not be bleeding all my essential nutrients out every month. And actually it did seem to reduce the level of bleeding. So that was good. And it didn't induce any of the other side-effects I was concerned about (weight gain, depression, loss of libido). All well and good. Sadly one of the less common side effects has rendered it rather less than useful. I think it has been giving me ovarian cysts.
I had a large ovarian cyst after I stopped breastfeeding Ashwyn, and aside from being rather painful (an understatement) it disrupted my menstrual cycle to the point where I was basically having periods almost all the time with only a small gap in between. This is not a common symptom of ovarian cysts, but then my gynecology seems to be set to 'if in doubt bleed'. This time round when I started having periods every other week I thought perhaps at first it was just stress (because stress has that effect on me too - made exams a fun time I can tell you). Then I started getting a familiar pain in the general ovary vicinity and thought 'hmmm, I have been here before'.
Ovarian cysts are a rare side effect of taking progesterone, but from my previous history it seems like they are a thing that my body does when it gets a bit confused about whether it should be ovulating or not.
So this is what I was doing before Christmas. The way to fix the bleeding every other week problem is, funnily enough, more progesterone. You take a massive dose of progesterone for 10 days, and then have a good solid bleed (always seems to come back to that) and then everything resets itself.
Except apparently if you are still doing the thing that gives you the cysts it seems like everything resets itself, but then goes back to bleeding every other week again. So massive dose of progesterone again (and this stuff does have side effects like breaking out like a teenager - tolerable - and week-long insomnia - not so tolerable), and then cold turkey on the whole lot.
And back to my normal, gushy self. Anyone want to guess what my iron levels are right now?
There are other hormonal options, of course, but I'm a bit put off by this experience, particularly given my thesis that this is something that's going to happen if I try and suppress ovulation. So we'll just try being normal again for a while and see if we can manage it with tranexamix acid, iron tablets and perhaps the odd course of iron injections.
Speaking of normal, it's only really in the last twelve months that I have come to realise how abnormal I actually am in this respect. For years it has never occurred to me that pads/tampons come in packs of 12-14 because that's how many most people use at one go, or that the 'most people lose 6-8 tblsps' wasn't just 'ha! doctors what do they know?'. I figure I probably bleed three to four times more than most people, though it varies a bit. This has slowly increased over the years, particularly since I've had the kids, but it's always been pretty heavy.
*sigh* only fifteen or so years until menopause...
I had a large ovarian cyst after I stopped breastfeeding Ashwyn, and aside from being rather painful (an understatement) it disrupted my menstrual cycle to the point where I was basically having periods almost all the time with only a small gap in between. This is not a common symptom of ovarian cysts, but then my gynecology seems to be set to 'if in doubt bleed'. This time round when I started having periods every other week I thought perhaps at first it was just stress (because stress has that effect on me too - made exams a fun time I can tell you). Then I started getting a familiar pain in the general ovary vicinity and thought 'hmmm, I have been here before'.
Ovarian cysts are a rare side effect of taking progesterone, but from my previous history it seems like they are a thing that my body does when it gets a bit confused about whether it should be ovulating or not.
So this is what I was doing before Christmas. The way to fix the bleeding every other week problem is, funnily enough, more progesterone. You take a massive dose of progesterone for 10 days, and then have a good solid bleed (always seems to come back to that) and then everything resets itself.
Except apparently if you are still doing the thing that gives you the cysts it seems like everything resets itself, but then goes back to bleeding every other week again. So massive dose of progesterone again (and this stuff does have side effects like breaking out like a teenager - tolerable - and week-long insomnia - not so tolerable), and then cold turkey on the whole lot.
And back to my normal, gushy self. Anyone want to guess what my iron levels are right now?
There are other hormonal options, of course, but I'm a bit put off by this experience, particularly given my thesis that this is something that's going to happen if I try and suppress ovulation. So we'll just try being normal again for a while and see if we can manage it with tranexamix acid, iron tablets and perhaps the odd course of iron injections.
Speaking of normal, it's only really in the last twelve months that I have come to realise how abnormal I actually am in this respect. For years it has never occurred to me that pads/tampons come in packs of 12-14 because that's how many most people use at one go, or that the 'most people lose 6-8 tblsps' wasn't just 'ha! doctors what do they know?'. I figure I probably bleed three to four times more than most people, though it varies a bit. This has slowly increased over the years, particularly since I've had the kids, but it's always been pretty heavy.
*sigh* only fifteen or so years until menopause...
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