Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrraaaaar.

[kiya]

I am sick and tired of this entire menstruation boondoggle.

This month's offerings have included cramps sufficiently bad to not only hurt like hell but also spasm my colon (which, admittedly, is not as bad as the sort of stuff I went through before I went on the pill, which included things like an episode or two of trying to be a bright and perky goddamn receptionist through literal blinding pain), the usual hot flashes which fade abruptly and make normality feel like a cold flash, a spate of nasty dizziness at tai chi yesterday which I was not capable of explaining in a socially acceptable manner, and now blood soaking things that it should not be soaking.

It's a goddamn boondoggle. Can we stop funding this project already?

Comments

[iamba-si.livejournal.com]

I never experience the physical symptoms myself, but I can usually time my periods by how nasty I feel mentally and emotionally before hand.

Now, I've never been on the pill, mostly because I'm afraid of the side-effects. Would it actually help with the emotional PMSing? (I always thought it would make it worse.)

--Iamba

[kiya]

Depends a lot on the formulation.

The thing I was on that worked well for me condensed my three to four days of moderate snappishness to one day of intense short temper; the thing that didn't work so well expanded it into a week or so of depression.

I considered one day of "Just don't talk to me" an improvement; other people might not.

[iamba-si.livejournal.com]

Hmmm...thank you. The depression is what I was most worried about, as I have had a few female friends lapse into bad depression after just starting the pill (it could have been a coincidence in all three cases, but I got to wondering...). As it is now, I don't just get "don't talk to me" when I PMS -- I have gotten bouts of mild depression, anxiety, hair-wrenching insomnia, insane jealousy, even spurts of manic-ness... The feeling is usually different every time, but I'm always *off* somehow. Never anything life-affecting...just annoying and sometimes disturbing. Something that could stop -- or shorten -- that would be great, but I don't want to just make it worse! In any case, I'll talk to my doctor about my concerns before I try anything.

Thank you! (Now who's giving TMI?) ^_^
--Iamba

[kiya]

Seriously, there are bajillions of different formulations of the pill these days.

The first one I was on (when I was about nineteen) killed my sex drive entirely, which sort of makes the whole thing silly. I mentioned this to my doc when I got health insurance again, and got a different thing.

The 'shortened emotional PMS effects' and the 'week-plus long depression' effects I got were for the same drug, technically -- the depression is from the generic version, the other is from the brand name.

It's utterly wacky.

As far as I'm concerned, matching BCP is about as fiddly as matching antidepressant meds.

[ardaniel]

Anywhere from six months to a year in, on combination BCP or the minipill, I get horrendous neurological migraines and the docs yank me off. The last doc was impressed that someone could manage that on the minipill, since it doesn't even have estrogen in it.

I eventually got tired of that dance, and the boy likewise wanted no part of his fertility, and the rest is urological history.

[sunflowerp]

Iamba: I hear a lot of anecdotal stuff about horrid depression while on the pill, but my own experience was that they had an antidepressant effect. (Since I was on them - with a few fairly brief lapses - from 16 until my mid-30s, the adjustment to "this is my brain without extra hormones" was a bit rough.) I don't know if my response is atypical, or if it's fairly normal but, as a non-bitchworthy side effect, it's less talked-about.

Sunflower

[iamba-si.livejournal.com]

Sunflower,

That's interesting. Good to hear something positive!

As a completely off-topic question (and if you don't mind me asking), would you happen to be Sunflower of Wiccan list?

[sunflowerp]

I'm on a few lists that focus on Wicca, but none that are just called that, so, no.

And, nope, don't mind being asked at all.

Sunflower