Updates 🥲

I don’t have cancer.

!!!!!!!!!

My biopsies all came back with HEALTHY, benign cells. Not even pre-cancer 🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲

I’ll be going back in January for another Pap smear to check if things stay that way, and see if I’ve managed to kick the HPV causing these troubles by then. I still owe $750 in medical bills for my procedures, but god damnit, I’m so freaking relieved.

As for my PMDD, it’s a bit more complicated of a story, though there has been an improvement. My focus is so much better since I switched to a higher dose of estrogen in my BC pills, and my binge eating has gotten SOOOOOOO much better. I have lost a pound or so already. It feels so good to be back in control of my eating behaviors. I swear to god it felt like I was possessed by No Face from spirited away, before this change.

I had done a lot better on this new pill Yasmin, but it carries a very high risk of causing sometimes fatal blood clots. So I did an experiment over the last month to try another birth control with the same dose of estrogen, but a progestin with a much safer risk of clots. However, it didn’t work for my PMDD. I could tell from the first few days that it was making me generally a sad girl.

My depression, irritability, low self esteem, and other physical symptoms have been in full force the second half of this month, and last night I had a full on mental breakdown episode. Internally seething with rage, akathesia (feeling so strung out like you want to jump out of your skin), panic attack, hyperventilation that took me WAY too long to get under control. I’m usually so good at emotional regulation, but PMDD turns me into a runaway train that I can’t control. It’s so frightening and upsetting.

Eventually my partner was able to help me calm down. And of course, this morning I started my period 🙃🙃🙃 symptoms always PEAK right before you start bleeding, and they drop off DRAMATICALLY from there. So I feel a lot better now 🙃🙃🙃 and will continue to improve over the next few days.

I’m going back on the dangerous pill for the next month just to have a sense of goddamn normalcy and being functional for at least 3 weeks. Then I MIGHT try another safer pill. T-B- FUCKING-D. I want off this crazy train 😭

I’ve been happy I’m staying reasonably productive for you all, as opposed to before when the brain fog was so bad I was fully dissociated daily. But follicular phase is coming, and I plan to make the most of it ❤️

Thanks for caring, and thanks for being with me through it all.

With so much love and gratitude,

M