December Update

On the 11th of December Brent and I made the hour and half trip to Oklahoma City to see a specialist. The Dr. was certain that I am insulin resistant at best. I had lots of blood work done and we talked briefly about me coming in every two weeks to visit with his nurse. Some of the blood work was to test hormones that will either confirm or discount PCOS. This Dr. feels that I do not have PCOS, but rather diabetes that is causing the hormone problems. The physical signs that he pointed out to me I have had since I was a teenager and couple of my teenage daughters have the same physical signs one daughter has them worse than I do. I go back in to see him the end of January and I will talk to him about having my 15 year old tested for diabetes, unfortunately my 18 year old is married so I am no longer responsible for making sure she gets tested.

I am anxious to get the results of the tests, as well as apprenhensive about the results. In the meantime I have found a chiropractor that works on structural problems that may possibly be related to hormone problems. This has been big, because the xrays that he did showed that my neck is started to hunch forward and I have a couple of vertebraes that are rotated forward. There is hope her in correcting my headaches and possibly help with some of the hormone issues.

My hormones have affected so many aspects of my life in the last year or so. I have become much more of a recluse and have realized that friendships are sometimes not as deep as they seem and some are deeper than we know. My marriage has suffered greatly because of the lack of sex drive and because of my reclusiveness. My kids have had to take up alot of slack around the house and in some respects have also become my best friends as I deal with fatigue and not feeling well. We have watched movies together, made crafts, and worked on the kids talents. I can't say that this experience has been all bad, I just wish that it wasn't so difficult. My husband has been sooo frustrated with the lack of intamacy and the pain that I have associated with it that our relationship has been rocky at best. Niether of us really know how to make it better, but I have come to realize that a husband and wife need first to be friends then lovers when that gets reversed and illness strikes there becomes hurt feelings, misunderstandings, and very little to work with. Husbands take time to have an interest in what your wives do and know enough to talk to them about it, wives do the same--it may save your marriage one day. A recent highlight in our marriage was the birth of our granddaughter. I was the midwife for the birth and my husband was my assistant. It was a wonderful experience and there are thoughts and talk now of him getting certified as a childbirth educator so that we can work side by side. (We will see how that goes!) He would be good at teaching I am not sure how well he will like the midwifery part.
I think it could be a fun experience to work together with moms, dads and babies!! Talk about a family business!!

Well that is the update for now. Hopefully there will be good news to tell in a few weeks!!

Oct 7, 2008 A place to share and vent

This is the first of what I hope to be many entries. I created this blog to be a place to document the difficulties, triumphs, and frustrations of being a 30 something woman who has been told that she is menopausal. My hope is to relieve my own stress and let other women going through premature menopause know that they aren't alone as well as documenting this journey for my daughters.

The last two years have found me skipping periods for long periods of time and having a period that lasted 5 weeks. I have been diagnosed with PCOS, had an ovary removed because of a beneign tumor, and then been diagnosed with menopause after being on progesterone for several months and having severe PMS and depression with the hormones. I was also on metformin for a few days, but got so sick from it that I quit taking it.

I recently started reading a book that suggests that testosterone with estrogen is the best therapy for menopausal women. I looked up the suggested website for finding a Dr. that specializes in the care of menopausal women. I will be traveling about an hour and a half to go see a Dr. in Dec.

That is a brief outline of what is going on. Later I will go into more detail (not too much), on how my health problems have affected my marriage and what we are doing to try to fix the problem. I have been dealing with symptoms for years and didn't realize it until they were so severe and obvious that I had to do something about it.