My Life With PMDD

surffer-from-pmdd I suffered from Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder (PMDD) for many, many years. I hope that doctors and other health care professionals begin to realize that this condition is very serious. If untreated, it can rob a woman of the best years of her life. This is my story:

I am 53 years old. I started my periods a week before my 13th birthday. How well I remember that God-awful day. My periods started to taper off about 2 years ago and as of now I haven’t had a period for almost a year and now I am finally free.

I suffered with PMDD for 38 years. I hope that my story keeps some young woman from suffering the way I did. I hope that it will wake up at least one doctor who will come to take PMDD seriously. Young woman shouldn’t be joked about and shouldn’t have to suffer today. The information is out there. Doctors, parents and loved ones need to listen and doctors, especially, need to start taking this seriously.

PMDD destroyed my life. In my time there was no diagnosis called “PMDD” and PMS and cramps was all in a young girl’s head! Even now it is hard to find doctors who will take a woman seriously about this–that has to change.

Every month for 38 years of my life it was like my whole world ended. I could feel and even see (PMDD can cause visual problems) that dark gray cloud descending on me 2 weeks or so before my period and I began to turn into someone I didn’t recognize (and didn’t want to know). It was almost like looking at life with grey shades on. On top of that I couldn’t go to school or hold a job for very long because of the severe cramps I suffered each month. My period did not always just flow. It came down in clumps. I doubled over, I couldn’t eat or sleep I was in so much pain. I ended up in emergency rooms. I had four D&C’s. Was put on strong pain medication (darvon, demerol) at a very young age. Nothing helped. I wanted a hysterectomy and probably, now that I look back on things, that would have been the best thing for me but no doctor would do it and, as I remember my parents would not agree to it. That’s too bad, because I believe my life would have been much different had I received the PROPER treatment whatever that treatment might have been even if it meant a hysterectomy.

For 38 years of my life I only felt normal for 1 week out of each month! One week, that’s all I had. During that week I felt physically and mentally somewhat normal. At least I felt human. The sun came out again and that gray cloud came off of my eyes. I felt like I was literally emerging from a coffin–digging myself out of a grave. I remember feeling exhausted and hungry. My menstrual cycle, with the PMDD and agonizing cramps took an awful lot out of me. I would lose an average of 3-4 lbs. during the week of my period. Other times I ate everything in sight. Junk, mostly. I ate whatever the food cravings told me to eat. Most of the time I was either in agony physically or spiraling out of control mentally and emotionally! I was someone I didn’t want to know. I was either depressed or angry most of the time. I was angry because I had to deal with this every month and I felt that if I had to deal with this I might as well die. I had severe mood changes. I was tired all the time, I had severe muscle aches, I was impulsive, irrational, at times violent, promiscuous, irritable, angry, bloated, depressed, in pain, sick and just plain miserable! I could not think straight nor could I focus or function. My memory was also very foggy at this time. I felt like I was on a roller coaster ride every single month and I just wanted to get off! I never knew how I was going to feel from day to day. I had, during my menstrual cycle, what I used to call, “a bad case of the **** its” (I used to laugh and try to turn it into a joke, but it was far from funny!). I didn’t give a D*** about anything, and THAT feeling made me feel even worse. I felt like I was just a worthless waste of space. I couldn’t understand why I didn’t give a D*** about anything. I didn’t understand why I did some of things that I did because I was not raised that way. I never had any hope, any dreams, any goals. I never gave thought to the future or what I wanted to be or do in life because most of the time I wanted to die. I didn’t dare look to the future because every month I descended into what I can only describe as the depths of hell. I knew from a young age that what was happening to me had something to do with my menstrual cycle but I don’t think doctors listened so good-neither did anyone else. Not only that, it did take me some time to equate the personality changes, mood changes and behavior to my menstrual cycle—I really wasn’t sure. Many times, I just figured I was just a weak, worthless piece of sh*t who couldn’t “suck it up”. I couldn’t plan anything. Plans made constantly had to be cancelled once my cycle started. I had to plan my whole life, around one week out of every month. I just stopped trying. I’ve had a lot of jobs but I’ve been fired from a lot of jobs also. I had to have very understanding supervisors because for 1-3 days out of the month I would not be in! Because I was a very good worker, I got cut a lot of slack in some cases, but not always.

I spent my 13th birthday in a mental ward diagnosed with schizophrenia (any mental illness back then was “schizophrenia”). I ran away from home as a teenager more than once. I had a lot of problems it seemed as though I was incapable of any rational thought. I started drinking and smoking pot off and on when I was 14 years old. However, I did not develop a problem with drugs until I was in my 20’s. That’s when I discovered cocaine. As I got older crack came next along with other drugs. I’ve been in several rehabs but to no avail. Drugs made me feel better–they took the emotional confusion and discomfort and the pain away–at least for a while and a little while was fine with me, I would take what I could get. However, in the long run, as I look back on it, drugs made things worse, much worse. Drugs did make me feel better at the time I took them but when they wore off I felt ten times worse. So I would just do more drugs. And on, and on, and on round and round. Throughout my life I also committed several crimes. I believe that crime gave me a sense of power and control that I didn’t have in any other area of my life. It’s just by the grace of God that I didn’t end up dead or in prison for some of the things I’ve done. But frankly, I didn’t much care if I lived or died. I never knew what I was going to do next. All those years, all those years I felt so bad, so bad for so long. I felt so useless, like I was just a bad person. I hated myself, I hated life, I hated my parents for having me and I felt like crap all the time. Then came the birth of my son. Pregnancy gave me much relief from PMDD but motherhood scared me. It literally petrified me. I remember the first time I saw him when he was born. He was about 1 month premature but he was beautiful and healthy as a horse. I remember going to see him in his incubator every day all day. However, it was not how it was in the movies—automatic love. What I felt for my son when I saw him can only be described as AWE. I was awestruck by him! I counted his little fingers and toes. I remember looking at him and saying “God help you, you have a space cadet for a mom”. I felt that giving birth to my son was the only right thing I’d ever done in my life and I was drawn to him. However, in the same token I also wondered how someone so beautiful and perfect could ever come from me. I thought that God had made a mistake in giving such a beautiful little life to me. Consequently, I felt he would be better off without me. I just thought I was no good, bad, a failure, irresponsible, weak and crazy. When my menstrual cycle came around each month and I would feel so bad I thought to myself no one goes through this, why me? I began to think that I was being punished for something and that I deserved that punishment. I thought I was weak for not being able to handle this. I must be crazy, right? It’s all in my head, right? I give into everything, right? I felt like crap and my self-esteem was non-existent. Needless to say, I was not a good mother at all. My mood changes, irritability, low-self esteem, confusion, fear, on top of my severe monthly menstrual pain and my alcohol and drug use caused me to be very unpredictable, even evil and even treat my son badly at times and because of that I was not there for my him and missed out on his whole life. I can’t get that back. I don’t spend a whole lot of time wallowing in regrets. But I do so regret not being able to be a mom. That’s the most important job a woman can have.

I had gotten into a lot of drug and legal trouble in New York so after my marriage failed in 1994 I moved to Tucson. For several months after I got to Tucson I stopped using drugs and found temporary work. However, I still was dealing with this roller coaster ride I went though each month and the severe cramps so I could not always make it to work. Drugs entered my life again. I made somewhat half hearted attempts at suicide more than once while in Tucson. In 2005, I nearly succeeded. A neighbor found me passed out on my living room floor with my front door wide open after taking a bunch of pills. He made sure I was breathing and put me in my bed then left and locked my door (addicts tend not to call ambulances). I woke up the next evening wondering why I was still alive. I was hospitalized more than once in Tucson and put on several medications which did not help me at all.

At the end of 1994, my first love, who I somehow managed to find after 23 years came out to live with me. At the time, he was getting out of prison in New York and told him that maybe he should come out and live with me. Before he came out I quit drugs again and remained relatively clean for two years. At the time I was working. I had been diagnosed with bi-polar disorder and put on psych meds. However, I had read that the medication I had been on would rot my liver after a long period of time so I quit taking the meds. The PMDD symptoms returned and the cramps never left. Even so, I found a really good job in 1995–a job that I really enjoyed but bosses are not always to keen on a person who has to be absent 2-3 days a month or who double over in pain each month and have to leave or taken to the hospital! After four years I was forced to resign. I felt like sh*t–another failure. I started using again. On top of that the monthly roller coaster ride continued. After that, my boyfriend and I started dealing drugs and living a pretty wild life. However, the more my boyfriend used drugs the more paranoid, abusive and controlling he got. We fought–physically–a lot!

In 2000, I applied for disability and got it in 2001 based on my bi-polar disorder diagnosis and a diagnosis of anxiety and panic disorder. I was still not diagnosed with PMDD until a couple of years after that. Finally, I managed to see a gyn doctor who told me that it sounded like I had PMDD and dietary changes were recommended to me along with certain vitamins I should take. This did little good probably because by that time my life was pretty much out of control. I was told by this gyn doctor that the bi-polar disorder and the PMDD probably exascerbated each other. I was also put on other psych meds by a psychiatrist that reeked havoc on the body and suffered some bad side effects and they did nothing for the PMDD. My life was a mess and my physical and mental state and emotional state was very bad so it was difficult to adhere to any medical advice. Finally, in 2002 I could not take the lifestyle I was living and the abuse. I moved out from my boyfriend and got my own place. However, I continued to see and visit him. In March, 2003 he died. I fell apart. For three more years my life continued to spiral out of control and I felt worse and worse each month. I was finally court ordered into drug treatment in 2006 and finally got clean (I did have relapses but since I no longer suffer from the debilitating effects of PMDD or bi-polar disorder, drugs have never become a compulsion again). A new doctor put me I on Effexor in 2006 and it worked wonders also I was not using. However, I felt scared. I didn’t know how to start over. I felt like my life was over and that it was just too late to start over. Finally, my periods started to taper off about 2 years ago. 2007 though, was a very bad year because menopause, at least in the beginning, made me feel pretty bad. I suffered from muscle aches so bad to where I could hardly get out of bed. The period started coming every 3 months and each time it was on its way I got those muscle aches. I also went through that old familiar roller coaster ride every three months–only not NEARLY as bad as when I got a period every month. I did go though periods of intensive fear and paranoia where I was afraid to leave my house. I also suffered from depression, loneliness and hopelessness. However, I believe that after all I’d been through this was normal and I was able to work through it. I just could hardly wait until the periods stopped for good!

There is a happy ending! I think I’ve beaten all that! I still have some fears, but at least I feel capable of working through them. I no longer spiral out of control or double over in pain every month. I feel great and can think clearly and rationally. As of now I haven’t had a period in almost a year. I do have night sweats from the menopause and they can keep me up at night. Sometimes I use sleep medication given to me by my mental health professional but basically, I am no longer on any medication. Menopause is a walk on the beach compared to having a monthly period. I feel so good now! No more dark clouds. No more jekyll and hyde. No more roller coaster ride–I got off finally! I’ve also come to the conclusion that I probably was not bi-polar after all. I believe it was all PMDD because I am no longer on any medication and I feel just great! Not only that, the symptoms I had only occurred for three weeks out of the month. I always had one week where I felt normal. Also, once the periods stopped for good I had no more symptoms. Now I go out every day and do volunteer work. I’ve joined a gym and have an eye on going back to college in January. I would eventually like to go back to work. Luckily, I have no other health problems and I am no longer so afraid. I’m finally going to get to do the things I could not do in my younger years. I’m finally free!

I tell my story now, so that any young woman or health care professional reading this could see just how bad PMDD is and how bad it can get! PMDD is a SERIOUS hormonal/chemical/ medical/ emotional/psychological condition that does not go away by itself. Without proper treatment (and that may include hormones, nutritional guidance, stress management, vitamins, lifestyle changes, medication, hysterectomy, whatever) PMDD will go on until menopause and rob a young woman of the best years her life! It also gets worse as you get older. It’s too late for me to get back those 38 years but maybe, by telling my story, I can help some young woman not go through what I went through. Maybe some doctor will see this and begin to take PMDD seriously. If anyone out there is suffering each month like I did and not know why or if any young woman can not understand what is happening to her each month–it just may be PMDD. Find an open minded and understanding doctor, preferably a woman, (I don’t believe in going to male gyn doctors, they have no idea what goes on with a woman’s body and mind during the menstrual cycle and they don’t take women’s health problems seriously) who will listen to you and give you the help you need. There is hope!

Hope I’ve helped. Thanks for listening.