An Exerpt from My Memoir: PMDD and I

​Chapter 1 of my memoir: 

PMDD- Life Interrupted

To understand me and my relationships, you have to understand what I myself was struggling with the whole time which amplified the intensity inside the drama of these relationships.  

Pre-Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) is an extreme version of Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS). PMS is when a woman gets physically or emotionally agitated right before their period begins. They usually feel cramps or extra sad before their period begins. With PMDD, a woman feels completely debilitated in these conditions with extreme physical pain and discomfort. They also tend to be suicidal or have suicidal ideations before their period begins. Once their period starts, the woman can have some relief but the physical and emotional pain doesn’t usually go away until after their period. This means a weak of torture during the period and sometimes a week or two of pre period torture. So that can be up to three weeks out of four in a month of debilitating physical and emotional torture. The fourth week is trying to overcompensate or overwhelm yourself with tasks or work that you couldn’t complete when you were in this severity of pain. 

It’s really difficult for anyone to truly understand this but especially a man. They even have facebook groups for men to join and understand. Most of the relationships I had romantically ended partially because of thee intensity of drama I brought into it. But you will notice that the men that I was in relationships with had their own fair share of mental illness or drug addiction. A lot of times they had issues far more severe then my PMDD. I think the reason or one of the reasons I went after these types of men and certain friendships too is because it took the attention off myself and my own problems. 

We don’t know the cause of PMDD but experts that I’ve spoken to (general doctors, gynecologists, journalists, women specialists, reproductive endocrinologists, therapists and psychologists) have believed that is caused by depression a person already has which is then amplified or the body’s reaction to trauma in one’s life. It is not a hormone imbalance but rather a woman’s reaction to her own hormones. I do in fact suffer every day from chronic depression since I was a little kid and I noticed my trauma was my dad’s death. My symptoms got much worse after that but they started badly at age 16 and became extreme by age 18 even though my menstrual cycle started at age 13. 

My period would make me highly clingy in romantic relationships and as an Aquarius, I’m usually somewhat emotionally detached. So I would be one way on my period and another way off my period which was confusing just for myself better yet other people around me. My hormones were sometimes so strong that I grew feelings for certain men I normally wouldn’t like and cried drastically over small, insignificant things. Also, any anger would turn into rage. 

But, emotional distress wasn’t even the least of it. I was in so much physical pain and a lot of doctors would pass it off as cramps or try to convince me it was cramps. But, my whole body felt like it was on fire. It felt like someone was squeezing and pinching my stomach obnoxiously hard that I couldn’t even sit up sometimes. Nothing would help. No pain relievers, weed or pain killers would help. It also felt like my body was so weak like I had terrible Covid. Sometimes, I wouldn’t eat for like a week and live off of water, juice and a few grapes. My body just couldn’t ingest or digest real food which made me even weaker and more depressed. I would also get terrible mouth sores at this time along with headaches and acne. I was a mess I want to say once a month or one week a month but sometimes it could last up to three weeks a month. 

It was really hard to cultivate relationships or have any commitments like plans, schooling, jobs, friends etc because eventually I would feel at  least one a month suicidal ideations (which was less severe then being suicidal). Then it all would go away and I would act like nothing ever happened. The amounts of drama and fights I got into along with cancellations of plans were insurmountable. 

I was frustrated when men couldn’t understand it. But I was really insulted when a woman couldn’t emphasize for it or couldn’t understand it. A lot of women could understand it especially those who suffered badly from PMDD or PMS as well. But then there was these women who thought I was a wimp for not being able to handle PMS like it was a right of passage or nature calling that women had to experience and deal with since the beginning of time. They thought sometimes that PMDD was a disorder the pharmacy created to sell more drugs. I honestly thought that before I had it. But yet they could emphasize with post pardum depression or Endometriosis because it sounded fancy. A lot of times I would just say I was suffering from Endometriosis, which is pain women get during their period which line the uterus and grows outside the uterus, because I felt like it sounded more serious and more legit. If I just used my period as an excuse, it wouldn’t sound as heartbreaking as it really was and I actually believed I could have Endometriosis as well with all the pain I was feeling. 

I saw every doctor or expert imaginable. I saw everyone from general practitioners to reproductive endocrinologists to the top mot expensive gynecologists where a lot of them wouldn’t take health insurance. I saw women specialists to several psychiatrists and psychologists. I even talked to and cried to the nurse at my college who sent me to a therapist at my college. I finally joined a support group on facebook so that I could vent to people that understood and gave good advice. 

I came up with all these theories that maybe my cravings were so strong for chocolate milk is because at that time in nature, I was suppose to have a baby and nourish them with milk and I felt clingy to men probably because in nature I needed a father to be there for the baby coming at that time. Maybe I was doing too much reading.  

I tried everything from changing my diet to exercising. A lot of women said skipping dairy might help and I figured it might help because maybe my body couldn’t handle other hormones from animals like it couldn’t  handle my own hormones. But that didn’t do it. I paid hundreds of dollars to some “expert” quack who just told me to exercise in some kind of aerobic way for at least thirty minutes a day. I could have saved my money. The work outs helped a drop but sometimes with PMDD, I couldn’t sit up better yet work out. 

I had to isolate a lot when I got my period because I was scared that my hormones would make me say the wrong things and would end even more of my relationships. A therapist once suggested it also. A lot of times I would sent reminders to myself when i was posing saying “This is your hormones talking. You don’t normally think these terrible thoughts”. I had Pinterest boards to look at where I saved memes and quotes or funny things for that time of the month. Sometimes cbd and alovera cream over my stomach helped ease it. 

A lot of gynecologists and endocrinologists said the only way  to solve this problem was to go on birth control to regulate my hormones so I tried several and my body couldn’t handle synthetic hormones just like it couldn’t handle it’s own hormones. Sometimes I felt worse than standalone PMDD and felt like my whole body was splitting in half. As a person who always succeeded in writing and won awards for it since the first grade, I had a teacher in college ask me if I was bilingual because my papers weren’t making any sense. I was extremely offended. I felt like I had my period everyday of the month. I called a random gynecologist once begging for help and she stated that she couldn’t help me because she didn’t know my health history. I wanted to ask if I should stay on thee birth control or go off it. I said it was an emergency and begged her to help me. But this person just wanted my business and hung up on me.

I had one doctor who said he couldn’t help me and probably just stuck a camera up me because he was bored or perverted. 

           Finally,  after a lot of research and talking to experts, I learned about Lupron where it shuts down your ovaries completely depleting your period and puts you in temporary menopause with hot flashes and the whole nine yards. But who could say this wouldn’t make things worse like the birth control. This was so very extreme and I did not to experience menopause this early in my life in my twenties. I learned from one doctor this was only a temporary solution anyways. I even thought about taking it all out with a hysterectomy but I read nightmare stories about that and then I wouldn’t be able to have children. I thought to myself how much I was suffering to have children. I thought to remove this part of my life and adopt since I wanted to adopt anyways. But I hated that I had to make that kind of decision because of it.     

Finally I meet with the miracle worker gynecologist and I decided to give birth control a try one more time with this being my last attempt. She told me to skip the white pills part of the package where a person normally gets their periods. This meant I would skip my periods all together and she said this wont affect my body otherwise. So, she took out my IUD which explained part of my pain that I was having during my periods and prescribed me Yaz, the leading birth control for women’s who had PMDD. This I knew for a while but I didn’t want to start it knowing that birth control in the past made things worse for me. But now I felt like things couldn’t get much worse and it was worth a try. My psychiatrist wanted to put me in the hospital every time I got my period which was ludicrous but that’s how bad the physical and emotional pain was. 

At first the Yaz made me feel depressed and I asked my gynecologist if I should still stay on it and she told me to stay on it one more week to see if it would go away. I reluctantly agreed and all the physical and emotional pain from the synthetic hormones and  my own hormones went away by skipping the white pills which skips the period. I haven’t had my period in a year and a half so I haven’t felt that emotional and extreme physical pain in a year and a half that made me isolate. I was so extremely grateful to have finally felt this doctor that I went to the bakery and bought her a cake. 

Unfortunately,  sometimes I think about all the relationships- romantic and familial and friendships that failed during this disorder. All the jobs and education I thought about and how I had to put those behind me while suffering during the disorder. I think about all the plans, occasions and events I couldn’t go to because I was in pain. But then I think about fate. This was a test and life’s plan. The things and the relationships in my life that were strong remained. Currently, I passed an extremely hard exam to be a software engineer which  I found in a time in my life where I just wanted to start over. On the other side of my brain, I am doing all kinds of writing like this memoir. I would have never been able to study for my coding test if I still had the pain of PMDD just like I wouldn’t be able to do all the stuff I love and need to do. I also hope that this helps other women. This is just thee beginning of my life without PMDD. There has been no PMDD in my thirties. I can’t wait to see what the rest of my life has in store for me and I feel strong enough now to defeat other challenges. No more PMDD. The world is my oyster. Let’s paint the town red.