Category: #Periodically

  • Peaks and Falls #Periodically 22

    Peaks and Falls #Periodically 22

    You might have noticed in my last #Periodically that I wasn’t feeling too hot about my time on the pill so far. I’m happy to report that things are going much better, but this second pill pack hasn’t been without its fiascos. Before anyone gets scared, don’t worry, I do not plan on documenting every pill pack ever, cycle by cycle, but during the adjustment phase and partly for personal record, I want to document the changes I experience during the first three months.

    The Second Pill Pack

    I won’t lie, the start of this cycle and my first withdrawal bleed on the pill didn’t catch me at my most mentally stable. For moments, and I mean brief seconds, I repeatedly convinced myself that I was about to drop dead, which I’m sure you can appreciate, isn’t very nice. My PMS is undeniably worse on the pill and unusually for me this bout extended well into my period.

    After early signs suggesting the pill was going to improve my skin, this cycle proved that that is not the case, it has in fact got worse. It’s a bummer but acne is something I am well-used to dealing with, and I’ll take it over pain any day. A more positive facial change (this one feels like TMI but hey, sharing is caring) is that my “beard” has vanished without a trace. I say beard and mean like four hairs but it was one of the reasons my doctors suspected I had PCOS way back when. Now that it’s gone, I can only deduce that whatever was causing it was hormonal.

    My period itself was exactly the same except it was two days shorter. I guess that’s nice but it was the two good days at the end that were cut off so if we could switch the off-days around that’d be ace. As my period ended and I began to think about starting the next pack, I was overwhelmed with a feeling of normality that I was certain was because I had been off the pill for six days. I even began to get my writing groove back, so taking the pill again felt like I was poisoning myself. But I did, and once I started I wrote in my diary “feeling slightly better about the pill but not actually any better – confusing feeling” – I’ll say!

    So a few things, like my face, began to settle into new normal realities on the pill. My weight is up and my hair is being weird but my motivation and creativity didn’t slump like it did last month which I am so grateful for. In fact writing-wise, March has been a bit of a boom. I’ve started reviewing plays for AYoungerTheatre.com and I had an amazing response to the article about the Always Period Poverty campaign I wrote for Harpy. You can read it here. I’ve even had a couple of moments where I’ve tracked “euphoria” and “clarity” on Clue – there were a few days and mornings where I just felt really damn good for inexplicable reasons.

    anne hathaway fun GIF-source.gif

    On reflection, these peaks might have been because the mood swings began. Maybe I missed that phase of puberty but I do not remember my mood ever swinging so literally. My sister was staying with us and wanted to have a bath and mentioned that she had scuffed-up my book (The Cows, come on Sally!) and I just flipped. I was sitting in a different room but my blood felt like molten lava and I wanted to hit something. Five minutes later I wanted to cry and another quarter of an hour later I was laughing at something and then it all happened again. I’ve always had grumpy days and sad days and happy days, but to swing so violently from mood to mood is new for me. When it finally settles I’m just left sitting on my bed like I’ve been bitten by a magical creature going “what’s happening to me?!” I was hoping this was just a phase too but they’re still rearing their heads regularly, so that’s a thing I’m trying to navigate.

    By this point I had finished three months on iron tablets and had a blood test to see if my anaemia was gone now. When I called to get the results, expecting the all-clear, I was told I needed to see my GP. “Piss it, what now?,” I thought. Disturbed by the mood swings, thoughts of spontaneous death and occasional “growing” pains in my legs I was looking forward to speaking to a doctor the next day. But then when I woke up, I couldn’t move. It was so bad that the first thing I remember thinking was “is today the day my ovary finally takes me to hospital?” Something in my right side had been bothering me all week, but on this particular morning it was stabbing me every time I so much as wiggled a toe. I called the doctor as planned and got an appointment with yet another new doc, this time a female Dr P. When I got there she told me that my iron levels were fine (yay no more horrible iron tablets!) but that she was worried by how much pain I was in. Given that it was my right side it was important to rule out appendicitis, which she did swiftly since I didn’t have a temperature. After she felt my belly up and read my file, she expressed concern that either a cyst on my ovary or the ovary itself, had “torted” – twisted.

    Not greatly comforted by that prognosis I sat while Dr P called the hospital and arranged for me to go straight to Gynaecology Emergency Unit (GEU). As my dad drove me I had a look through the files she had sent me with and took pictures of them – for the first time I was actually made privy to the inner goings on of my body and my doctors’ conversations – a rare treat. We got to the understandably rather scary and sad place that is the GEU and I was seen by a nurse who took my vitals, a gynaecologist who did a pelvic exam and another nurse who did some tests. Typically, by now whatever the pain was it had peaked and eased off and the gynae reasonably came to the conclusion that I was not at any great risk of emergency. The pelvic exam hurt, but not as much as it would have if a cyst or ovary had been twisted. She sent me home with an obscene amount of co-codamol and an appointment for an ultrasound in a few days.

    By the time the scan arrived I was feeling a lot better, without any help for the co-codamol which I didn’t take. I was relieved to be having the scan though because I was going skiing at the end of the week and was growing increasingly worried that if I fell over I was going to burst a cyst. Before I went to the scan I wrote my expectations on a post-it to make the inevitable easier to process. The post-it says “there will not be anything there. Good and healthy. Looks normal. No change”. I was right. The sonographer was really helpful and speculated that it was possible the sudden increase and then complete drop in pain I’d experienced was caused by a cyst rupturing or going away. The gynaecologist I then saw in the GEU afterwards was not as supportive or helpful. As far as she was aware, and I understand she had very little to go on, there were no cysts or any other indicator of a gynaecological problem, and so there was nothing a gynaecologist could do. I think the fact I still have an open case with my regular gynae made her words easier to swallow because even though she was saying ‘”nil gynae” case closed’, I knew the case was far from closed. I was once again told “that’s life,” “we rarely get to the root of these problems” and “try your bowels” – just like after the surgery. It was all horribly familiar but I took it much better this time. My mum was irritated by it too and fought it more than I did – thanks mum!

    Anyway, I was happy to have confirmation of a cyst-free uterus for the beginning of our mini ski break. I was nervous about it (as were insurance companies who took more money than normal, ugh) because about a year ago I stopped running as it was aggravating my pain. Since I refuse to pay to exercise when running is free, this has meant I’ve done nothing more than hiking and walking in the last ten months. If a cyst didn’t interrupt our ski trip, a heart attack might… I am so happy to say that three days of skiing were accompanied by absolutely no uterine or fitness induced pain – all injuries were purely skiing and ski-boot related!

    When I returned home an amalgamation of PMS, sciatica and post-holiday blues left me feeling pretty glum. Yet when I look back on March and the second round of the pill, I actually feel really hopeful. I’m working on the basis that I’m cyst-free for now because the pill is working. My pain levels haven’t come down drastically but there is a small improvement, and I’m confident it’s going to get even better. Now that I know I can ski I’m also filled with the hope that I can start running again soon, or doing something at least, because the pill/croissant combo has done nothing for me on the scales… Plus, if it does all get better on the pill then it will prove that the cause is gynaecological –  that would be a really satisfying up-yours to the doctors who have said “nil gynae”. I just hope that if the pill is the solution, that I can get a grip on these mood swings soon.

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    Hilary – 1, Ovaries – 0 (Ski boots – 2)
  • A Period of Change #Periodically 21

    A Period of Change #Periodically 21

    Right first of all, some truths, disclaimers, apologies etc. Since I started the pill, and I don’t know if it’s because of the pill or whether it’s just a coincidence, but I have really struggled to start new writing projects. Ongoing projects have been fine, but creatively, coming up with new ideas and starting new sentences has been a challenge. So while it’s been a hot minute (5 weeks) since I started the pill, I’m only now writing about it for the first time.

    It has been a total ride, hell, it still is. From temper tantrums to bowel-crises, emergency gynaecology appointments to jaw aches – the last five weeks have had it all. For today though, I’m just going to focus on the first pill pack and how that was. As many will know, when you go on or off a hormonal contraceptive, or any hormonal treatment, things can get weird for your mind and body. I knew it was coming, but unfortunately that didn’t make it any easier. Knowing it was going to be a period of change for potentially unpleasant reasons, I decided to add some *nicer* changes too, so I bought a new menstrual cup from Me Luna (which I love and will talk about in more disgusting detail another time) and readied my period pants sent to me by Thinx.

    The first pill pack

    When you start a combined contraceptive pill it’s recommended that you take the first pill on the first day of your period. This immediately means your cycle will be shorter that ‘month’ because your withdrawal bleed from the pill will come in three weeks from your last period, not four. I did as followed, of course, and was immediately confused. Despite all the signals my body had been giving me that I was about to have a particularly bad period, nothing really happened. My period had started but not really. At this point I thought two things: 1) woah does it really work so fast – this is kind of great! and 2) but what if the lining of my womb that had built up to shed now never sheds – where’s it going to go?! So as you can see, I was thinking really clearly.

    Going into it I was determined to have an open mind and not to be paranoid about every tiny little symptom I experienced – yeah, surprise to no one, that lasted about 23 hours when I got a migrainesque headache, the first I’ve had since, well, what do you know, the last time I was on the combined pill! “Keep an open mind, keep an open mind,” I said through gritted teeth as I took the second pill. In the morning, on day three, I was actually relieved to discover that my period had properly started. I was in pain, felt a little nauseous, but I always feel slightly relieved when that happens (for like five minutes, don’t get me wrong) – it’s the fifth vital sign and all that.

    And then Tuesday came. I remember that it was a Tuesday very vividly because every week that’s passed since I’ve noted, “it’s been X weeks since that Tuesday. I survived – I can survive anything.” Fuck me – this is why I haven’t written this blog yet because I am trying really hard to block that day from my mind, but in the name of documentation I will relive the experience. In fact this is the furthest I’ve got writing this story so far (deep breaths). It was, to be frank, the most pain I have ever been in in my life. I was expecting things to get worse before they got better, but I also didn’t know that there was so much more pain yet to be achieved by my period. I was woken up by a regular period pain that just continued to get worse and worse and worse throughout the morning. Painkillers did nothing, moving did nothing, lying still did nothing, hot water bottles did a little but I’m fairly sure I burnt the skin on my belly from using them too much. It eased off at lunch and then returned in the afternoon. Honestly, I feel pretty traumatised by it, even now. I was at a point where I was googling “is it totally ridiculous to go to A&E for period cramps?” and I might’ve even convinced someone to drive me there if I hadn’t been home alone. There was vomit and tears, Bridget Jones and chocolate (usually pre-menstrual treats, not menstrual coping distractions). At the end of that fateful Tuesday I remember feeling as though my body had gone into shock. In hindsight now I’m like, “alright drama queen *eyeroll*” but I am also aware that it was really fucking scary and that I never ever ever want it to happen again to me nor anyone else.

     

    Needless to say, this wasn’t an excellent introduction to life back on the pill. I tried, am trying, really hard not to blame the pill but there’s only so much I can do to stop my brain making the connection between horrible, horrible pain and a drug designed to mess with the affected organs. Like I said, now I’d survived that, I could survive anything. Or so I thought until I realised that THIS PERIOD WAS NEVER GOING TO END. Twenty-two days. I bled, for twenty-two days straight. I know they say to expect “unusual bleeding” when you start the pill but come the fuck on. I decided it probably wasn’t too healthy to wear a menstrual cup for three weeks straight and while I tried my Thinx pants (jury’s still out) I only had one pair, and so I had the delight of wearing sanitary pads for three fucking weeks. Sorry for the profanity but TWENTY-FUCKING-TWO DAYS.

    I was also consistently plagued by a few charming new symptoms during this time. One change that I was not particularly excited about was a change in my breasts, which happened quickly and painfully – I’m talking stretch marks on my tits after just five days. Thankfully they seem to have resettled and calmed down now (hopefully!) The other symptoms have namely been: headaches, migraines, an unexpected jaw ache presumably caused by my habit of stress jaw-grinding, growing pains in my legs (please don’t say I’m still getting taller), the mood swings of a 14 year-old, a generally gloomy demeanour and unexpected creative block. The last three have irritated me the most. Not being able to write, whether caused by the pill or not, has just been incredibly frustrating. The way I would describe it is that it feels like someone is sitting on my head and that I can’t look up to see what’s going on. I’m hoping – by the fact that I’ve finally written this blog, that the person on my head has buggered off, but I will be honest and say that I am not feel overwhelmingly positive about the pill so far.

    Back to the twenty-two day period, if you’re good at period maths, it means that I didn’t actually come off my period until I had finished the first pack of the pill. So again, it was hard not to let my brain process the obvious fact that pill = extension of the world’s worst and longest period. True to form I came on my next bleed two days later but that, and the story of the emergency gynae trip, is a story for another blog.

    Enjoy #Periodically? Read the last update here, or check out my review of Natural Cycles here.

  • My experience using Natural Cycles #Periodically 20

    My experience using Natural Cycles #Periodically 20

    “How do you review a contraceptive?” was a question I asked myself when Natural Cycles kindly sent me a six month trial of its certified* contraceptive app. I sure as hell wasn’t going to risk pregnancy for the sake of a blog, even if I had been having any sex in the first place. So the following review does nothing to attest as to whether the Natural Cycles app actually prevents pregnancy, but it does test the accuracy of the app against my own fertility awareness, that of other apps I use, namely Clue, and how it compares to hormonal contraceptives like the pill. I have now (sadly) restarted the pill, but the last five months of my hormone-free journey have been made so much more interesting thanks to Natural Cycles, it was the perfect way to say goodbye to my (literal) natural cycles.

    giphy (8)

    It’s nothing like the pill…

    … in that it’s non-hormonal, non-invasive and has no side affects. For those who don’t know, the app works by taking your Basal Body Temperature (BBT), which you measure yourself, to detect the rise in temperature that occurs around and after ovulation to estimate your fertile window. Whereas most contraceptives involve taking precaution 24/7 or with every sexual encounter, by knowing when your fertile, ideally you can gauge the (much longer) period of time when you’re infertile and have lots of barrier and/or pill-free sex during that time. With that in mind, the app gives you ‘green days’ (infertile, go bare-back if you wish!) and ‘red days’ (fertile, wrap it up). Since you don’t have to ingest anything or have anything injected or implanted into you, there are no side-affects, which is very attractive to lots of people with uteruses for obvious reasons.

    Contrary to what a member of my family presumed, you take your temperature by sticking the thermometer in your mouth, NOT your vagina!

    But it’s more like the pill than you would think…

    … because it relies on you doing something at roughly the same time every day. What’s worse, it relies on you doing it first thing in the morning before you’ve done anything else at all, including but no limited to, getting up. If you happen to take the pill as you get out of bed, but one day forget until after you’ve brushed your teeth – it’s no biggy, but if you brush your teeth and only then remember to measure your temperature, then you have immediately compromised the reliability of the app and therefore your contraception. For someone like me – the very opposite of a morning person – this has been a challenge. I usually need an alarm on the other side of the room to get me out of bed, and while I’ve had alerts reminding me to take my temperature before my alarm goes off, it took a while to get consistent with measuring in the morning. In this sense Natural Cycles is a bit like the pill, skip a pill and risk fertility, skip a measurement and risk a green day when it ought to be red.

    Do I have a drinking problem or is there an evolutionary flaw with the app?

    There are a few circumstances when your temperature is considered unreliable. Getting out of bed before you measure being one of them. Basically, anything that messes with your BBT is no longer really your BBT and might wrongly detect ovulation – the app calls this a deviating temperature (naughty). Other triggers for a deviating temperature include having a lay-in (or any disruption to your usual sleeping pattern), being unwell or having a hangover. Now boozy nights have become much less frequent for me since I graduated, so I wasn’t worried about hangovers being a major hindrance to my experience with the app until it became clear that the only bloody time I was hungover was around ovulation.

     

    My hangovers (the green dots) as tracked in Clue

    The first couple of times I thought it was a fluke, but then it started happening every cycle – something about being fertile makes me DRINK. There are several explanations for this, but one that sticks out for me is that one of the behavioural changes that we experience around ovulation is that we go out and socialise – biologically, this is to find a mate, but socially in the twenty-first century, this often involves having an alcoholic beverage or thirteen. This is in no way Natural Cycles’ fault, honestly it could just be a coincidence with my own bad habits, but it disrupted four out of five fertile windows I had while trying the app. For this reason I personally wouldn’t recommend the app as a contraceptive to single people enjoying regular drunk stranger sex.

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    Sure, it’s a fun game to play when you’re not having sex, but a risky one if you are

    Throw an ovulation test in the mix – I dare you

    So once it was decided I was going back on the pill, albeit reluctantly, I wanted to really see what Natural Cycles could do in my final cycle using the app. When you input your temperature it gives you the option to add a positive or negative LH (Luteinising Hormone) test, a positive result means the hormone is surging and you’re about to ovulate. So with this in mind I started a five-test pack on the date recommended by both Natural Cycles and Clue. Five days passed and I only had negative results, as far as Clue was aware I was out of my fertile window and steaming towards PMS. Natural Cycles meanwhile was pulling the old “the ovulation symbol has disappeared for a while until we detect it” which is reassuring. So I bought another pack and continued for another five days… still nothing. This really made me panic, I’m going back on the pill to stop me ovulating – “WHAT IF I DON’T OVULATE AT ALL IN THE FIRST PLACE?” I thought, thinking I’d accidentally discovered my real problem. Another three tests later and I got a positive result on the twenty-third day of my cycle (I have no idea if that is normal and or healthy) BUT ANYWAY, low-and-behold my temperature did what Natural Cycles expected it to do after that and my pain moved in tandem with it – I think it successfully detected my ovulation – wahoo!

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    There were so few green days it almost wasn’t worth the fuss

    Maybe it was because the app was still getting to know me or maybe it was because my ovaries are evidently dysfunctional, but red days have been the majority, making me think that if I were having sex, it would be a whole lot easier (and cheaper given the price one would normally pay for the app) to just use condoms all the time? I wouldn’t have to worry about getting out of bed too quickly, an issue that has never ever been an issue in my life before, nor having a hangover or a cold.

    Uhm… my birth control isn’t a video game & other concerns

    I’m all about making Femtech fun. There’s a pelvic floor exercise device and app that involves moving a butterfly by literally clenching your vagina – I think that’s brilliant (and hilarious), but if I’m trying not to get pregnant, that’s no joke and I don’t treat it as such. So the fact the app has “achievements” for users to unlock, i.e. it’s currently hounding me to become a “Pro Cycler” – I’ve only got three stars so far – isn’t very motivating to me. I get that they’re trying to encourage users to input as much data accurately and as often as possible, but for me it felt a bit like trivialising what is otherwise a very scientific app.

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    In the same vein of thought, I’m a little uncomfortable with how the app is advertised. “Wake up. Measure. Get Up” the slogan goes and upon setting up everything is said in such a positive, sales-pitchy way that the very serious warnings risk passing you by – like the fact if you have a reproductive issue like PCOS for example, it’s likely the app could interpret your data incorrectly – and anything that risks pregnancy is dangerous. There have also been concerns mentioned in the press and also at a number of Femtech events I’ve attended that the figures regarding the success of the app aren’t entirely reliable, you can read the company’s reaction to some of these issues in its press release here.

    One other minor annoyance. Are we not done with blue periods and bizarre, unrealistic representations of women? Let’s just get one thing clear, at no point during my Natural Cycles experience did I wake up and measure looking like those featured on the app’s website. Can you possibly tell which one of these photos is the official Natural Cycles branding??? 

     

    Case and point…

    A step in the right direction

    I’ve learnt a lot about my body and Femtech in the last few months using Natural Cycles. The hormone-free aspect of the app is incredibly appealing to me, but the fact remains that it relies on me too much, and I am not nearly reliable enough for it to work for me as a means of birth control. However, the app is, without a doubt, progress.

    What would I like to see from Natural Cycles in the future if I were to use it again?

    • No achievements to unlock or stars to gain, just pregnancies to achieve and avoid!
    • An alert that wakes me up before the actual alarm set on my phone to remind me to take my temperature.
    • A better interface for inputting data – it’s a bit too numerical and off-putting. (The graphics on Clue are much more welcoming, but Natural Cycles’ temperature graphs are waaaay easier to read than Clue’s.)*
    • No BS about the risks. Say it how it is please!

    *Same data as presented on Clue and Natural Cycles. While Clue is not a contraceptive app, I find it really hard to interpret its temperature graph, a problem I didn’t have with Natural Cycles. 

    Clue
    Natural Cycles