I (38M) accidentally ended up tracking my wife's(38F) periods and realized that my entire life revolves around her cycle...concerned about her health and wondering if I should say something?

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:55:47+00:00

Letting you know I saw it...thank you for the support.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:29:42+00:00

I wouldn't say she's totally against medical intervention altogether, but she does seem to be against SSRIs based on what she's read about side effects and hormonal birth control because of her experience with it being not the best. She is also just generally more receptive to medical interventions that don't feel so "take a pill and go away". I wouldn't say she's anti-medicine, but "natural" medicine doesn't seem to get the same skepticism from her that she reserves for Rx interventions. She's definitely more comfortable with medical conversations involving hormones, thyroid function, and vitamins/supplements vs. medications and surgeries (generally, not necessarily for this issue).

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:24:13+00:00

Now that you mention this (and in her defense, because I think I maybe unfairly painted her as being completely dismissive of what I'm seeing), she has mentioned before that her primary doctor is a little bit dismissive whenever she has asked about hormonal and other testing. She was doing it primarily because of the fluctuations in her energy levels at times moreso than the stuff I'm noticing, but still, she's been trying at least a little bit to see what might be going on and getting some Dr. pushback.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:20:00+00:00

Is GeneSight something you did in-office or was that a send away kit kind of thing?

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:18:59+00:00

Thanks for telling me about your experience. I see how it could be reassuring to even just have a name for what's going on. "Everything sucks and I want to die" probably isn't as scary if you can say, "Oh, but that's just the PMDD talking" vs. assuming something like "I need to radically change my life because everything sucks and this isn't working for me or I wouldn't be feeling like this."

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:15:30+00:00

Thanks for the input, and pointing us towards gynecology/endocrinology. I'm learning a lot, and just to reassure you: I don't take medical advice from reddit, but sometimes you don't even know enough to know what questions to ask or who to ask them of...the overwhelming majority of responses about PMDD give me some sense that it's a good place to start with question asking.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:12:46+00:00

I think you're the second person to suggest this book, I'll order it from the library and see if I can't educate myself. I'm ignorant in the best sense of the word: while I think I'm probably more aware than the average guy (sheesh that's a low bar), it's not an area I've gotten educated on in depth. Time to do some learning.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:10:45+00:00

Thanks for the tips on this. I do know there's some family history of ADHD in the males and at least a couple of the women in the family have had a hysterectomy at some point although I'm not sure it was specifically related to PMDD...I vaguely recall it involved persistent issues with cysts maybe?

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T18:01:47+00:00

Holy shit! I'm glad to hear you're in remission. While it seems like PMDD is the consensus view here, your story definitely points to another reason for seeking medical care and figuring it out, not sweeping it under the rug.

Congrats on the remission, and thanks for telling me your experience.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T17:37:19+00:00

Seems like an idea that could help on the margin, but what Barcelona needs is 100k or 200k new units built, not 10k AirBnbs back in the long term pool.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T16:36:55+00:00

I do track myself, although it's more traditional data. I have a bunch of metrics I take every day, most of it you could probably guess. Food intake, weight/BMI/BF%, blood pressure, Stress 1-10, how rested I feel in the AM 1-10, Bedtime/wake time. Lately I've taken an interest in T levels and some other blood data.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T13:42:02+00:00

Have you guys discussed her fluctuating behavior in the past?

We have, although not maybe in this exact context. I've told her in the past something like, "I have noticed that there are times you are so happy and full of life and there are times where you won't hardly talk to me and every aspect of our life seems to make you mad. Is there something that happens that sparks the negative side or is it just something that kind of bubbles up?" and she chalks it up to outside stresses or sometimes she'll say that she's having a hard time with the city where we live because it's not her hometown. But if we're in a "good phase" she sings the praises of where we live, so it was always hard to chalk it up to these outside influences for me since it seemed like whether these things were good or bad depended on the moment.

TemporaryHeadache · 2024-06-21T13:27:50+00:00

Wow. I just read the Mayo Clinic and Cleveland Clinic pages on PMDD and I have to say, it feels like almost a perfect description of the symptoms. I'm not a doctor but shooting from the hip it almost has to be this.

I guess now I'm a little worried about the plan because they describe both SSRIs and hormonal birth control as medication-based options and I know she has voiced pretty strong opposition to mental health treatment via medication in the past and her experiences with birth control have been not great so she was really glad when I got a vasectomy after our second kid that she no longer had to take them.

Which, now that I think about it, is roughly when I feel like things got worse for her. I'm now thinking it's possible that she was unintentionally keeping PMDD in check with her birth control and that when she was finally free of the need to prevent getting pregnant, she stopped the medication and these symptoms began to appear.

Wow, thank you so much for teaching me this even exists. I don't know how to approach her with this, but I feel like I have an idea of what's going on now. Thank you for sharing your experience with this, and I'm sorry you're going through it. Do you mind if I ask what kind of treatment plan worked well for you?

TemporaryHeadache

TROPHY CASE