I don't want to take Prometrium!!!I'm sick of being a FREAK!

InfertileMyrtle · 10-27-2005, 01:46 PM

What started out as light spotting over 6 weeks ago has now turned into what appears to be a full blown period for the past 2 weeks. A very heavy one at that. I called my doctor who suggested putting me on Prometrium again, which I cannot tolerate. Last time she put me on it to start my period after going 3 months without one, I became frighteningly depressed with scary suicidal thoughts. I kept invisioning opening up my bedroom window and throwing myself out of it, or I'd be driving and envision myself slamming into a wall. I was terrified because while I do have depression, I've NEVER had anything like this happen to me before, and as soon as I stopped the Prometrium, it never happened again.

Well, she wants to put me back on it, or she said I could try the cream which doesn't have to travel through your whole body to work. I'm really scared, and I declined and said I'd just wait it out a few days and get back to her.

What happens if I do nothing about this weeks-long period? I'm hoping it just goes away on it's own, but the depression I've felt these past weeks has been tough. I cry at the drop of a hat several times a day, I feel angry, frustrtated, like a freak, my mood swings are out of control, I can barely function, I'm exhausted all the time and there appears to be nothing I can do anymore. HELP. Seriously, I'm losing my $hit

Jenika21 · 10-27-2005, 06:02 PM

((HUGS)) I am very sorry that you are dealing with this right now. Since you had such a bad experience with Provera, why don't you try BCPS like yasmin?? There are some side effects to this as well (nausea, sore boobs ect) but it shouldn't be like anything that you experienced w/Provera. BCPS will regulate you and can make you feel alot better to. Or you could also try Metformin which has helped many cysters. I would also recommend getting on some depression meds ASAP and therapy as well to help with the depression. Take care of yourself.

InfertileMyrtle · 10-27-2005, 06:06 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jenika21

((HUGS)) I am very sorry that you are dealing with this right now. Since you had such a bad experience with Provera, why don't you try BCPS like yasmin?? There are some side effects to this as well (nausea, sore boobs ect) but it shouldn't be like anything that you experienced w/Provera. BCPS will regulate you and can make you feel alot better to. Or you could also try Metformin which has helped many cysters. I would also recommend getting on some depression meds ASAP and therapy as well to help with the depression. Take care of yourself.

I'm not on BCP, Prometrium has to do w/ progesterone. It supposedly re-starts your cycle- I took it last time to get a period, now she wants me on it to make it stop. I'm already on 1750 of metformin and no BCP, i'm trying to get pg. Thanks for the encouragement tho.

Jenika21 · 10-27-2005, 06:18 PM

hmm... maybe you can wait another week or so and see if you stop on your own?? I don't want to offend you but, I think that you might want to get your depression under control before TTC. Pregnancy hormones can make depression worse and just from reading your post I think that you are suffering from pretty severe depression. Plus you want to be emotionally stable enough to parent your child KWIM.? Please please do not get offended, I just think that you should look out for yourself and your future child's(ren's) well being.

InfertileMyrtle · 10-27-2005, 06:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jenika21

hmm... maybe you can wait another week or so and see if you stop on your own?? I don't want to offend you but, I think that you might want to get your depression under control before TTC. Pregnancy hormones can make depression worse and just from reading your post I think that you are suffering from pretty severe depression. Plus you want to be emotionally stable enough to parent your child KWIM.? Please please do not get offended, I just think that you should look out for yourself and your future child's(ren's) well being.

it's already being dealt w/ via therapy and once i can get my stupid hormones under control, the depression will get under control. I didn't always used to be this way. I've already seen everyone you can think of for every ailment you can think of, it's all due to my hormones. lucky me.

RunnerDuck · 10-27-2005, 08:17 PM

Prometrium doesn't exactly start your cycle over... progesterone encourages the uterine lining to thicken and tells the body to hold on to it. So if you need to have a cycle, you would take it for X number of days... and then stop... and the drop in progesterone would result in a shedding of the lining. If you needed to stop a cycle, you would take it for X number of days and keep taking, and the increase in progesterone would result in your body holding on to the lining. That's why it would be used both to start and stop your period. (You seemed confused on why she'd be telling you to take it to stop but maybe I am wrong?)

Estrogen also plays a role in this process but I don't exactly understand how... I think it holds the lining together somehow. Hence the reason women on low estrogen BCPs are more liable to experience spotting. And I have heard of low estrogen being a factor in non-stop bleeding... we cysters tend to have high estrogen but that's not always the case. Has yours been checked?

Anyway usually people do well with Prometrium (which is natural progesterone) and not so well with Provera (which is synthetic - called a progestin). It's possible in your case, you might be the odd case to do better on the synthetic. You might give that a shot. Or you might look into one of the BCPs least likely to cause depression (there is a sticky on picking a good pill on the BCP forum... I believe it's the last sticky... and the first link in it) and give that a whirl - a balance of estrogen and progestin might be better for you than all progesterone.

Progesterone is what rises after you ovulate and is what causes premenstrual syndrome. People blame estrogen for making wome emotional but progesterone packs a powerful punch and can make a person angry, sad, irritable, suicidal, etc. I have turned into a raging screwball on certain BCPs... and when I first got pregnant, the jump in progesterone had me crying all day long with no reason (I didn't know I was pregnant... they weren't tears of joy, they were tears of wanting to curl up and die!)

I hope you can find something that helps you.

I had a case of non-stop bleeding last fall... I thought my periods were coming back after having the baby a year before but the first was light, the second was normal, and the third went on and on. My OB put me on Ovcon BCPs which made it worse... I monkeyed around with those for a while... bleeding eventually stopped when I got off the pills... I went to see a new RE and have been taking Avandia as well as met since then to see if the PCOS will get better controlled. Maybe you need another means of PCOS control, too?

Good luck to you! I know how it sucks to bleed and bleed and bleed...

InfertileMyrtle · 10-28-2005, 11:34 AM

Thanks for the advice runnerduck,

I had blood drawn this week showing low estrogen and low progesterone, the bleeding seems to have lessened today and yesterday, so I'll wait it out a few more days. The testing also showed I haven't ovulated, I'm so, so frustrated- with all the usual feel-good pcos symptoms I can physically see (thanks alot there, chin) along with the internal ones, I don't even feel like I'm a woman anymore. I'm taking my met faithfully, struggling with my diet, but still trying...when does this end? I'm 31 years old- we want to have a baby so badly and at my age, when is that going to be a possibility? I'm terrified of getting cancer because of my freaky periods/non periods and diabetes which is in my family, and to top it all off, the hormones, the depression caused by the hormones (my dr. likens it to ongoing pms) and then I thnk of my poor husband who has to put up with all of this, I'm ready to throw in the towel. I'm meeting with my RE in a week or so, and the thought of the prometrium scares me to my bones because. When am I going to be a normal woman instead of what seems like 1/2 a guy?!

I wish there was a support group in my area that I could go to. I was turned away from an infertility group because i'm not taking infertility treatments actively (wtf?!)and I won't be able to identify with the other women. It was through resolve- thanks for your advice, i'll do some reading on prometrium and other alternatives. I just feel like i'm drowning in the garbage and no one can hear me scream!

frustratedly yours,

I. Myrtle

RunnerDuck · 10-28-2005, 01:39 PM

I understand... PCOS is such an insidious (sp) disorder... it takes something from you that is so hard to lay a finger on. I hate the half man half woman feeling.

I feel like I spent all my teen years feeling so different from the other girls and it seemed like maybe just my weight... I was overweight... but there was something else... I felt like their skin was different... I had this HAIR... I feel like a REAL woman can do all these girly things that must be such a blast, shop for shoes, get a new 'do, go to the spa, have a massage, a facial... but I have wide, dry, not girly feet... my hair is thin and not worth fixing... I don't want a stranger touching my weird body... I don't want anyone near enough to my face to see my clogged pores and whiskers! It's such a rotten condition, it steals part of your gender identity...

it was hard for me in college, too, when I had a lot of gay male friends who were of the fussier sort... and I'd think we'll they're MEN and they can do girly things and feel OK about it, why can't I? But even though they were biologically male, they STILL seemed more female than I did!

And the whole period/infertility thing... it bothered me long before we were TTC. It was because I *knew* I would have problems, I *knew* I lacked something other women took for granted... I would go ballistic just to hear a woman in the next stall rattling a maxipad wrapper because SHE HAD SOMETHING I DIDN'T and it WASN'T FAIR!!!

I tell myself I could be worse off... I could be missing a leg or an arm or something but... I feel like there's no other disorder that robs you of your identity this way. That's the hardest thing about it. People don't understand what's the big deal about not having normal periods... it's just impossible to get a normal person to see just what it steals from you, inside.

Anyway... I understand.

squidge63 · 10-29-2005, 11:02 PM

I had the same problem with bleeding. I had gone from like no periods for years to the odd one or 2 which lasted a day or 2 at the most. Then Dec 03 I started bleeding and didn't stop for 70 days, which freaked me out. It was heavy for me, but not like a heavy period that most people I know get. Then it stopped for a week and came back for 54 days. I saw my dr who referred me to a Gyn dr who did a hysteroscopy and saw that I had a polyp growing on my endometrium. I then went into hospital and had an op to remove it, had some bleeding after the op, but it still didn't stop. When I went back to see them the dr started me on progesterone to stop the bleeding, it did that alright but I became so depressed, cried at anything, and felt so rough so i went to my GP and she told me to come off them, I did and the bleeding carried on. Had an internal ultrasound and another polyp had grown, so back into hospital to have that removed.. still kept on bleeding (not heavy though thank god) and the gyn dr suggested having a Mirena coil inserted, he said that it would have less side effects than the pill form. I refused as the progesterone was still going into my system and I react badly to any female hormone put in me. I was referred to another Gyn dr and 2 weeks ago I went into hospital again and had a trans cervical resection of the endometrium to try and stop the problem. I am still bleeding small amounts but I am sure that will go away. Of course if you want kids then that op wouldnt be a solution for you. I keep trying to get them to do a hysterectomy but they keep refusing on medical grounds due to my diabetes, high BP and chest pain make me a higher anesthetic risk.

Try and hang on in there, I know it is hard and even harder when you are trying for a family. As I said in another post, although we might not feel it WE are ALL EXCEPTIONAL WOMEN, we put up with so much for most of our lives, but we get there, how I am not sure somedays but we do. We have a wonderful site here where we can openly discuss with others who know what we feel and what we go through. There is always someone on here who you can talk to. OK you may not feel like a woman, but I have seen plenty of photos on here that jump out and say WOMAN, FEMININE.. in whatever shape or form you come in. You have to make the best of what you have got, and those of us who have partners, they love you for who you are.. they wouldnt be with you if they didnt. I am the opposite end of the spectrum here and know that I was born in the wrong body, so many of the pcos side effects benefit me (not the diabetes and high BP etc..), but the hair, the masculine build make me feel like the man I should have been. One time my Endo docs said that even without my raised testosterone level I would still have been hairy just because of the amount i grew... On the photo thread I dont see any who look masculine (apart from me lol) i see many pretty feminine ladies, in all shapes and sizes. I have been in the looking unfeminine mode when I was trying to be straight, and I didn't have a problem getting a guy, and only 1 guy ever said anything about me being hairy and that was it. You have to keep fighting and carrying on so that you can work towards your dream. Take care and don't forget we are all here worldwide to help you.