The Hormonster
I have been struggling with hormone imbalance since I first started my cycle some 11 years ago. Along with these imbalances came pretty severe endometriosis, PCOS, mood swings, irritability and depression to name a few. Now 11 years ago, this was just written off as a moody high schooler, which turned into a crazy college girl, which eventually settled into “something is seriously wrong, someone… anyone please listen to me.” I didn’t know what was going on at the time, only that I was in excruciating pain everyday. Some days I couldn’t get out of bed and eventually my back and legs went numb. I saw many doctors, most of them telling me that it was in my head or that there was nothing they could do for me, that I needed to be on even more birth control so the symptoms go away. I refused to take that for an answer and I didn’t stop searching until I finally found a doctor that was willing to try exploratory surgery.
What was supposed to be a thirty minute procedure, turned into a 5 hour procedure. Before the surgery, I made the doctor repeat back to me all of the areas I was in pain and where he needed to look (demanding, right?). I remember waking up from the surgery to him saying “Kid, you know your body well”. Turns out, I had two cysts (3cm each - one on each ovary), a mass wrapped around my left Fallopian tube (every time I walked, ran, etc. it would pull down on my Fallopian tube, causing my leg to go numb), and a mass behind my uterus made from embryonic cells (a mass I have had since birth), severe endometriosis, and my colon was wrapped and smushed together with scar tissue (something they only see with traumatic injury patients). I will never forget those moments waking up after surgery, no matter how drugged up I was. I wasn’t crazy. It wasn’t in my head. I was in serious pain and I was ignored for years. There WAS something wrong and I was right to listen to my body and to fight for myself.
Now, I know what you’re thinking because I thought it too…. That was the end of all of my troubles. Everything would balance itself out. I’m healthy. I workout. I’m on birth control. I eat pretty well. I shouldn’t have anymore symptoms because they literally CUT that stuff out of me and FIXED me….. I was very wrong.
The pain crept back in slowly, as did the irritability, as did the mood swings and depression, as did the endometriosis and PCOS growth. In 2020, living in a new place, with new doctors, I went back in for ultrasounds. They found two large cysts (5 cms each), and I was told they would subside over time (even after I word vomitted my lengthy history over and over again). I begged for another surgery, and was denied by every doctor I saw. Thankfully, I was able to stop and say to myself “this would be just a quick fix anyways, you cannot do this every two years”, which is the moment I decided to go completely natural and figure out why this is happening to me. I was on a mission.
I tried months and months of acupuncture, equiscope therapy, medical astrology, herbalism, I even saw an energy healer. You name it…. I tried it. And still nothing helped. The mood swings got worse. I became a completely different person for two weeks out of every month, all because of my period. I was afraid to eat things because I thought my body was using it against me. I was still in excruciating pain, depressed and having terrible mood swings. I went back to the doctor, whom has her PhD in women’s health. She’ll have my back, right? Also wrong. I was offered Oxycotin for pain, more birth control on top of the birth control I was already on, and depression medicine. I said no to the first two (because.. what the heck?), but decided maybe it was time for some extra help with depression meds.
The medicine worked for about three weeks, until I found myself not being able to get out of bed. Its like the medicine made me… more depressed? I never wanted to leave the house. I didn’t want to be around people. I didn’t want to work anymore. Tyler finally spoke up and we realized together the effect the medicine had on me. Which was worse? Period alter ego or whoever the depression meds turned me into? I eventually tapered myself off of them. We decided it was best to get my IUD taken (the real ol natural way), and have yet to go back to a doctor since.
The mood swings got even worse. The depression did too. And the pain… well, once you’ve experience pain everyday for most of your life, you learn to live with it. Things were as bad as they had ever been, but this time I had a partner who it was affecting daily too. Someone going though their own health issues at the time too.
That’s when a magical fairy (who happens to be my mother) suggested hyperbaric oxygen therapy. I wasn’t really sold on the idea of how it could help me, but I was desperate. I started myself on an aggressive protocol, doing one 60 minute session every single day, sometimes two. I regained feeling in my lower back after just the FIRST session. Slowly things WEREN’T happening anymore. The mood swings disappeared. I became less irritable. I was happy… a foreign concept to my period alter ego. The depression went away. The pain too.
And here I am, to tell you, to try hyperbarics. I strongly believe that this is something everyone needs to be doing as much as they can.