I’m wondering if anyone else here is in my position. At the age of 40, during excision surgery for endometriosis, I also had my uterus and fallopian tubes removed due to adenomyosis. I’m happy to report that at the age of 46, my Endo pain has been nonexistent, and obviously I no longer have symptoms of the adenomyosis.
What I didn’t realize would be the precarious position that retaining my natural hormones would put me in, if I am no longer menstruating. In the past, I had really big emotional lows the week before my period (diagnosed PMDD) but once my period started, it was a physical reminder that I wasn’t actually crazy, the world wasn’t actually as terrible as I had thought, here’s the simple, concrete explanation and boom, my moods would become stable as my hormones reset and did their thing. Also worth noting that at the time, I was on progesterone to keep my periods more regular.
I opted not to continue hormone therapy after my surgery. I’ve noticed in the last couple of years that I’ve been having awful mood swings which seem to resolve suddenly, as they did back at the start of my cycle. But this time there is no physical reminder that it’s just my cycle. And to top it off, my cycle is normally quite irregular, so I’m just on this unpredictable ride. I had brought this up with my gyno, and she didn’t see any use in testing to see whether I was actually in perimenopause because we fluctuate in and out of it, and to just assume I’m peri.
It sounds ridiculous, but I miss having my period if only because I’m lacking a clear indicator of what stage of life I’m in (I.e. observing flow and regularity to track signs of peri) and the comfort of a simple explanation and perspective when I get really disregulated.
I think my next steps are to talk about hormonal therapy or insist on labs to get some kind of baseline. Just, I find myself in kind of a unique position among my friends, in that I’m the only one who’s lacking a uterus, but still has their hormones at this stage in their life. Wondering if there’s any other folks like me on here.