Dear Dee,

Maybe you could ask your doctor about birth control that lets you skip your period? like seasonique gives you 4 periods a year. I think they are some that offer longer but I am not sure if that’s good on the body but that’s my opinion.

Or if they are mising I find eating more red meat or things that are easy on the tummy to keep down then the periods can come back after more stable eating for awhile.

Hope you find relief and feel better!

Dear Dee:

I want to google some things regarding the topic/ what you shared and I will be able to do that and reply at about 1 pm this afternoon.

anita

Dear Dee:

You are welcome and thank you for your kind words.

You experienced the “pleasure” of your first period at 12, and it lasted about 5 days. Following that- no period for several months, then irregular periods to age 20. Around 20, you had the longest, heaviest, most painful period. Following a medical examination, the only finding was that you were very anemic. You were then put on a birth control (BC) pill so to regulate your periods, which worked well enough: you had a 3-days period per month for a year. Next, you stopped the birth control pills, then back on the pills in December 2020. But in January 2021, you “began having really bad abdominal/pelvic pain”, got yourself to the ER “because the pain and discomfort was so intense”, no medical findings. A day later, you started your period and it lasted 2 weeks.

At the beginning of March 2021, you got so fed up with the irregular periods, you figured no periods is better, so you stopped the BC. Sometime in July, following experiencing “all of the symptoms but no period” you had extensive medical examinations, and viewing the results online, you saw a note by the doctor stating that “everything looks essentially normal and we will go over this when I go to see her again which will be August 4th”. You are concerned bout whether you are infertile, whether you have “some random disease or whatever any other case could be”.

My input today: I am not a doctor, nor am I a medical professional of any kind. Even if I was a doctor, I would need access to your records before making any medical suggestion.

To my non-professional mind, it seems like because (1) your menstrual problems did not start this summer but since the age of 12, and (2)  because there were no medical findings (other your anemia) in April 2018 when you were medically examined, and (3) because of the doctor’s note this month=> that likely, there will be no significant medical findings this time around.

obgynwc. com, reads under the title “How Stress Can Affect Your Period“: “We all know that stress can affect other areas of your life: It can throw off your sleep patterns, cause you to eat more (or stop eating completely), make you short-tempered, or take away your ability to concentrate”,

It then goes on to list regular, everyday stresses and then more serious stresses that “can cause your body to go into survival mode. This type of stress can affect the functioning of the hypothalamus, the portion of your brain that regulates hormones relating to regulating your body temperature, sleep patterns, hunger, thirst, mood… and your menstrual cycle.

“When a woman misses her period for several months in a row, it’s called secondary amenorrhea. This condition also has additional symptoms:– Headaches – Blurred vision – Vaginal dryness – Nipple discharge – Acne If any of these circumstances and symptoms apply to you, it’s crucial to schedule an appointment with a gynecologist, since secondary amenorrhea may lead to fertility issues and a loss of bone density”.

Back to me speaking: it is well known that young women in Nazi prison camps stopped menstruating because they were indeed in “survival mode”- the body was too busy surviving starvation and over-work to .. worry about reproduction and menstruation. It is well known that severely anorexic women also stop menstruating, for the same reason.

Let me know what you think of what I posted here so far, and we can discuss/ research this further.

anita

Dear Dee:

You are welcome. Here is something else you can take to your appointment on Wednesday. It is taken from what you shared in June this year: “I have a long, long complicated relationship with food seeing as I’ve struggled with body image since I was at least 5… I have had a significant history with binging and purging through my middle school and high school days, a little bit into my adult life. I often feel the urge to purge when I eat a lot even now, however I ended up stopping completely as an adult since I realized how much of a toll it took on my teeth, along with the fact that it never made me thinner, just let me feel better physically and mentally about eating so much”-

– Your binging and purging took a toll on your teeth, you wrote. Maybe it took a toll on your menstruation as well. Maybe the anxiety that’s behind the binging and purging is also behind your irregular menstruation history.

You wrote that you struggle with body image ever since you were 5- that’s a long, long time. What if your body reacted to your problems with it.. by giving you more problems.

I figure that you can’t go wrong by seriously working to make peace with your body. Imagine your body then reacting by making peace with you!

anita