I'm so bad at following through. With anything. I'm constantly starting new projects and get distracted halfway through and never return to complete them. Some projects I return to every once in a while and pick up where I left off. This blog is one of the latter.
I've blogged before about the problems I've had with my lady plumbing. I've been to several doctors in the past who have just tried to put me on birth control hoping that corrects the problem. It never does. I was once on birth control and continued to bleed for nine weeks. After week three (I was used to having two-week-long periods at this point), I began to get concerned. So, I called my OBGYN's office. Apparently, that wasn't alarming enough to get me in to see her in a reasonable amount of time, so I had to schedule my appointment TWO MONTHS OUT.
At five weeks, I called again to see if there were any cancellations. Again, I was made to feel as if bleeding for five weeks from my reproductive organs was nothing to be alarmed about and no move was made to accommodate me or my fears. I wasn't even allowed to speak with my doctor. After bleeding for nine weeks, it finally stopped, and I called to cancel my appointment. That was the last time I tried to get help for the problem.
Recently, however, things have been worse. I've been tired, laggy, and my periods have become even more erratic than they were to begin with. So, I decided to try again. I have a friend with endometriosis, and she has an OBGYN she swears by. Luckily, Dr. K was taking new patients.
My initial visit was basically a consult. It was an opportunity for us to feel each other out and for her to get to know my history. Dr. K was horrified when I told her what I'd been dealing with and stunned that no one had done any tests to even attempt to find out the cause.
I told her I wanted a full hormone panel, because I knew there was something wrong, and I wanted to figure out what it was so I could fix it. Bleeding for two weeks, having a two week break, and bleeding again is not normal, and it's physically exhausting.
So, she scheduled me for every blood test under the sun. Seriously. They took just a little under a pint of blood. And then, I waited. I waited for two weeks until all the tests came back. I knew there was nothing life-threatening. I'd been dealing with this for nearly fifteen years. I would be dead by now if something was horribly wrong with me. However, the waiting game is never fun.
Dr. K called on Monday to go over my results. She told me I'm anemic, which isn't a surprise since I bleed more often than I don't. She also said all of my hormones were a little on the low side of normal, except my testosterone and luteinizing hormone. Those two were practically non-existent. I was surprised about the testosterone, to be honest. If anything, I had expected it to be high.
I asked what it meant that they were so low, and she said it means that I have entered perimenopause. I had been joking for a while about going through the Change of Life, but I was half serious. I was kind of hoping for it, to be honest, because it's the easiest answer to the issues I'm having. That does not, however, rule out any possible underlying causes.
She is going to do even more tests and take an endometrial biopsy, because she's still concerned I may have been dealing with endometriosis since the very beginning of my menstrual cycles. I honestly don't think that's the case. I've had two trans-vaginal ultrasounds (I loathe them with the fire of a thousand suns), and no one mentioned seeing anything that would indicate endometriosis. Oh, and this afternoon, I get to have a third! Because the universe hates me.
The endometrial biopsy will tell her if I have healthy cells in my uterine lining. If the cells are healthy, we will leave it be. If not, she may recommend an endometrial ablation, which is where they go in and charbroil your uterine lining. She said I would have to be 110% certain I never wanted kids because the procedure would drastically lower the chances of me being able to get pregnant. She also said that it was highly unlikely I would be able to get pregnant anyway with my hormone levels being what they are.
It's not terribly surprising. I'm in perimenopause. It's basically a gradual decline in your ability to reproduce, and I'm fairly certain this has been the case since my early to mid-20s. That's when I started having weird, super painful periods that were two weeks long, made me dry heave, and gave me visual migraines. I think it went un-diagnosed so long, because it's highly unusual for a woman in her early 20s to be perimenopausal. Heck, it's unusual for someone younger than 35!
So, for all intents and purposes, I am infertile. Which isn't awful news. It's not great, but it's not devastating. Well...not for me. My mom is pretty bummed about it, but I'm handling it well. The first night was rough. It's one thing to make the decision yourself. It's another entirely to have that decision taken out of your hands.
That's not to say it's impossible. Time, however, is not on my side. Even if I did find someone I wanted to have children with, a pregnancy attempt would involve expensive hormone therapies and procedures like in vitro fertilization. I could maybe freeze some eggs and use a surrogate when the time came, but that's a costly decision I'm not prepared to make at this point.
Who knows? Dr. K has referred me to an endocrinologist to address the overall state of my whacked out hormones. Maybe they can get everything back on track, and the infertility will sort itself out. I don't think I care either way, to be honest. Adoption is always an option. There are plenty of kids out there who need loving homes. Or I could just adopt fifteen more dogs, a couple of hairless cats, and a hedgehog.
I've still got several diagnostics ahead of me and a trip to the endocrinologist. I'm not worried about the diagnostics because, as I said before, if something were horribly wrong, I would probably have been dead a long time ago. I am, however, interested in what the endocrinologist has to say.
