ChezPerky

So last summer I went for my, uh, we’ll call it annual physical with my PCP. Yeah. Annual. That’s right. Something like that. And I was pronounced in good health, post delivery of HOMs. My weight was down significantly from my pre-pregnancy weight (though, of course, I could still stand to lose weight, my doctor was thrilled with the weight loss and never ever tells me I need to lose more – I love her), my cholesterol was down, my triglycerides were down, my blood pressure (as usual) was low, I’m not diabetic. The perfect picture of health.

So when she asked if I had any other questions, it would have been easy to just skip right on out of there and go on with my life… but something odd had been happening every month, like clockwork. Since delivering my babies, I’d been having a period every single month. As if that weren’t odd enough, for the 10-12 days before my period would arrive, I was … not myself. Raging lunatic would be a better way of putting it. Crying, depressed, incapable of coping with even the tiniest disruption in my expectations for the day. Screaming at my husband. Big, fat, rolling tears at every little thing. Sensitivity to every change in routine. This wasn’t a little PMS. This was PMS on crack.

Without even a little hesitation, my wonderful PCP diagnosed me with PMDD – premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Now, I’d never really noticed it before because except for the medication-induced periods, I’d had very few periods in my adult life. But you know? Come to think of it, before each treatment cycle began before I finally got pregnant? I did pretty much fall apart – screaming, fighting, rip-roaring angry for no good reason, crying at the drop of a hat, etc. All about 10-14 or so days before I’d go in for CD3 monitoring for each of my cycles. I always worried that my husband would say, “That’s IT, clearly this is all too much for you, we’re not doing any more of this crap, we’re DONE! because that would have just made everything that much worse!”

Fortunately, I have the world’s most wonderful husband, who would never suggest such a thing and he just sits there and takes it. Mostly.

And here I am, a few days before I start Lupron. About a week before I’m going to get my period, and where am I? Crying. Screaming at him. Unable to cope, pretty much at all, with every little change in our projected schedule for today, and NOTHING worked out today the way I’d anticipated. Everyone melted down, including and especially me. Surprise! My old monster of a friend, PMDD. I’d forgotten about her. That dark monster who lives inside me. That black, gooey friend who seeps into every pore of my being and doesn’t let go until the last second.

I never did anything about it last summer because I was breastfeeding and usually you treat PMDD with SSRIs (e.g. Prozac) and Prozac and breastfeeding are… well, not necessarily incompatible, but not really great either. And then I stopped breastfeeding the same week I met with the Doc at the Hatchery, so it wasn’t really the best time to do anything about it then either. And then I started my IVF cycle, and that seemed like a really bad time to start it then, because what if I get pregnant? And really, if I get pregnant, problem solved anyway, because it’s really only those 10-12 days that I need anything regardless (many women with PMDD take SSRIs all the time because they can’t predict their cycles, but most take them only for the second half of their menstrual cycle). But then the cycle failed. But it’s on to the next one, right?

It’s a vicious cycle. How many cycles are going to fail before I do anything about this, do you think? I wonder what SuperDoc would say about me starting an SSRI. Will I have the cojones to ask him about it? Probably not.

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