A menstrual cycle is like a merry go round – only it gives you no say in your participation. You are dragged on at around age 12 and you get kicked off at around 51. While at the beginning it seemed both exciting and terrifying to be finally allowed on the ride with my fellow women, by age 23 I’m already begging to be let off. With more years ahead of me than behind me in the reproductive window of my life, I shudder to think of how I am going to survive another 28 years of this monotonous yet horrific ride.

On a classic merry go round you experience the same ups and downs in each turn of the ride. For most ladies this is not so different from their menstrual cycle. Some woman (a group who I believe are some of the luckiest in the world) present zero symptoms during their 28-day cycle. One day they’ll go to the loo and see that they have their period, a few days later it will be gone, and around three weeks after that it’ll come back once again, unannounced. This continues for the duration of their time on the merry go round. These woman probably don’t mind their carousel sentence, they can sit on their ornamental horse and experience the ride whilst having their minds somewhere else dealing with their lives like normal people. As a sufferer of PMDD (premenstrual dysphoric disorder – or as described in a previous blog “PMS on steroids”) I can only fantisise of such an existence. However, this group of woman are actually in the minority. A paper called Diagnosis and Treatment of Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder describes the statistics around how many woman suffer from some form of premenstrual symptom.

While 20 percent present no symptoms at all …

“…up to 80 percent of women of reproductive age have physical changes with menstruation; 20 to 40 percent of them experience symptoms of PMS, while 2 to 10 percent report severe disruption of their daily activities.”

While the 20% who present no symptoms of premenstrual stress live a consistent existence on their carousel, my own experience on the merry go round is not quite so level. I do have my own form of consistency in the persistent presence of premenstrual symptoms of some form. However, each turn of the ride can be totally different as these symptoms range in their severeness. So far this year I’ve had two spectacularly bad turns on the merry go round. On my current circular trip I am experiencing mid to severe symptoms.

So what are the symptoms of PMDD? I found an interesting paper in the American Family Physician Journal which has a table that explains the symptoms really well. I copied it and thought I would share it.





On this current trip around the merry go round I am identifying very clearly with point B. The last couple of days are a good case study in the symptoms presented in Table 1. I’ll run you through it.

Yesterday I woke up at my usual time of 6am and found I was still exhausted (despite an 8 hour sleep) (symptom A.7.), my whole body just seemed to be weighing me down, I turned over and slept for another hour – unable to get out of bed. I went into my office set on doing a decent amount of work on my thesis – a large amount of my whole year project was going to be due in nine days. I worked slowly, not only was I unable to concentrate on what I was doing (A.6.) but my brain only seemed to be working at about a quater of its normal speed and capacity. Following a lengthy sentence was hard enough. Transcribing interviews was proving an absolute disaster. As I sat in front of my computer, forcing my pitiful brain to work, I became more and more restless (A.2). At around 11:30 my classmate came into the office, asked how my day was going and I broke into tears (A.3.). Completely overwhelmed, I quickly went and caught the bus home feeling on edge the entire trip. I went into my house, quickly said hello to my flatmates, went to my room, got into bed, started crying and then fell asleep for a couple of hours. That was about midday yesterday and it is now 7pm the following day and I haven’t left the house despite having several social engagements, semi-serious life admin on my to-do list and significant deadlines looming (symptom B).

That’s the thing with having PMDD, your life isn’t dictated by days (i.e. Monday-Friday vs. Sat-Sun) but by your ovulation date. The two weeks pre-ovulation are pure bliss whilst the two weeks post ovulation become unrelentingly difficult. This means that social occasions, due dates and other non-every day events need to be planned accordingly. Hence the title of this blog “Let me just check with my uterus and get back to you”. Your diary no longer matters, your best tool for organisation is your period tracker app (I use this one https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.period.tracker.lite&hl=en) as it tells you around about when you are going to ovulate allowing you the opportunity to aviod any unnecessary tasks during the post-ovulation phase when even the easiest of life tasks become monumental struggles.

Even a lovely moment can become an emotional hurricane in these two weeks. Sometimes, when I start to question whether PMDD is real or whether I am just imagining it, I remember this one memory. It was a few years ago when I wasn’t yet aware of my hormone imbalance. I was at rugby practice. During the entire training I could feel tears built up on the edge of my eyeballs, waiting to escape. Rugby practice is not really the most appropriate place to have a cry (unless you have been catastrophically injured) so I tried my best to rein in my tears. After I completed a rather spectacular tackle and my coach told me “that was fantastic!” I suddenly exploded into a monsoon of tears. My coach – as you would expect – didn’t quite know how to react. She sort of patted me on the back and asked if I was okay. I nodded being unable to explain why being paid such a small compliment would move me so significantly. Thinking about how I felt that day I know that normal people don’t feel like that. I know that when non-PMDD sufferers are paid a compliment they feel good about themselves, not a sense of dispear. Had the same thing happened a week earlier I would have reacted more appropriately, feeling pride in myself rather than shame.

It is experiences like these that slowly start to train you in a behavioural way. I’ve slowly and subconciously learnt to avoid any interaction that might result in an uncontrollable, irrational, emotional outburst. Hiding at home in my bedroom where I can minimise the chances of something triggering this adverse reaction is my coping mechanism. There were times, before I knew about my PMDD, when not leaving the house for three days plus was pretty normal for me. Luckily, I was at Uni at the time and so could do so without facing serious consequences. Now that I know why I hide, I can more easily convince myself to get back out into the world even when I truly do not want to. Even if its just a walk on the beach or to the shops for some milk, forcing myself out is an important thing to do.

Avoidance has been the main theme of this go on the carousel. Perhaps some ladies get on the carousel and they stay on the same horse for the whole time. Whether this horse is symptom free or one specific symptom or set of symptoms, they will have the same ride ahead of them every 28 days. With my own menstrual cycle it seems I get on a different horse each cycle. This time it is a horse called “Avoidance”. Last cycle I was astride “Depression” and earlier in the year I had a terrifying, all consuming ride on “Anxiety”.

Thinking about the 30 or so years I have left on this ride I worry about how I’m going to handle it. I worry about how this carousel is going to affect my current friendships and relationships as well as my future ones. I worry about how it is going to affect my career. Being considerably less productive for 3-10 days a month is not a desireable trait for employers. And putting PMDD on “health problems that might affect your ability to work” is very unlikely to help me secure the job of my dreams.

While for some woman their carousel involves a smooth up and down motion which is somewhat soothing, allowing them not to worry about PMS and to let their mind settle on other areas of their lives, I do not have that luxury. For two weeks it is lovely and smooth and I can get my life together. The second half, each up and down moment is so severe that it almost knocks me off my horse. For those two weeks all of my concentration has to focus on hanging on to my horse and just making it through those fourteen days. A reassuring thought is that it is temporary, soon I’ll be back in bliss zone and it won’t seem so bad. And then I remember that I am going to have to endure this every month until I am 50 and suddenly all reassurance is lost, I crawl back into my bed and hide until my horse bucks me back to the start of the cycle.