Hey y’all. I’m transitioning to a new job (again). And that means precious little time to serve my vocation of educating and learning about autism. There’s a lot of stuff going on in my life, and I thought I’d share some of it as I’m able.
However, the writing of the bigger, more difficult things has been intensely painful and difficult. So I’ve defaulted, this week, to something somewhat smaller: a medical development in my life.
The short version is that after I got the vaccine, my internal organs decided to have a relatively polite hissy fit. Specifically, my female internal organs.
If the idea of monthly periods is disturbing to you, this is your chance to find something else to read. Okay?
Before
Cool. I’m more or less used to bleeding every month, though I definitely resent it. I don’t recall asking to be born female and don’t particularly like much of what comes with it. Mostly I just tolerate it.
For most of my life, my periods were exceptionally heavy and extremely painful. Not “curl up into a miserable ball and wish myself dead” painful, which is the kind that suggests endometriosis. But painful enough that moving around was misery. A menstrual cup and heavy-duty pads were essential. I referred to the first day or so of my period as Hell Day, which was not an unreasonable designation.
This is likely due to some kind of hormonal imbalance. It’s unclear what kind, but at one point I had sufficiently unusual periods that a doctor prescribed me birth control to even things out. I never bothered with it, which turns out to have been a very fortuitous decision for my mental health.
And then…
This all changed when I got the Pfizer vaccine. I got both shots, of course. But the first one was enough to mess up my cycle. The second drove it home, though.
I stopped having predictable periods. And they stopped being heavy. In fact, they barely hurt at all after the vaccine. Which was actually pretty amazing, save that I nearly ruined a pair of underwear due to not noticing I was going on my period. Pretty shortly thereafter, my spouse and I started having pretty significant issues… which distracted me pretty well from my weirdo biology. At least for a while.
Eventually, though, I started realizing I hadn’t stopped bleeding in a while. It still didn’t really hurt, but bleeding for 3-4 weeks straight is… well, unusual. And not really healthy. It was never a lot of blood, but it didn’t stop… and periods are really only supposed to last a week, perhaps a bit more, but sometimes significantly less.
They’re definitely not supposed to last two whole months, which was about the point I finally said, “maybe this is a bad enough problem I should go see my doctor…” So thankfully it was easy to get an appointment with my doctor using a newer online system. I also had to throw together whatever I could to help her figure out what was going on. Which meant reading back through my journal entries to find dates and whatever patterns I could find about my period.
It’s also worth pointing out here that the only reason this didn’t cause serious medical problems is that my daily supplements have a good dose of iron as well as other things essential for building blood. If I wasn’t eating so well and taking my vitamins, I probably would have become faint and collapsed at my job. Bleeding that long is no joke. Your body can only replace lost blood so quickly. I was able to leave the issue alone so long only because my health is very well supported.
Medical tests
My doctor was concerned, suffice it to say. There were a few possibilities. We ruled out pregnancy first, which is how I found myself picking up pregnancy tests after walking out of a hospital (where my doctor works).
Can’t say I’m overfond of peeing on a stick, but at least the stick was obligingly quick to provide results: negative. No kidlet on the way. Which is good. I really can barely manage myself right now. Dragging some poor kid into the mess that is my life would be cruel at best.
So with that ruled out, it was blood test time. I’m actually not sure what we were ruling out with these, but we checked the contents of my blood as well as a few other things. Everything came back normal. I wasn’t even low on red blood cells, which is a mercy given that I’d been bleeding for about two months straight at this point.
I also noticed, by this point, that having an active job, bending at the waist, and singing all made me bleed harder. Which was really depressing. Sing less in church, despite that it’s one of my favorite parts of church. Don’t be so active, despite that movement is key to a happy brain and life. Also, my job required it, so that was not at all optimal.
Finally, when all that came back, my doctor decided it was time to break out the ultrasound. The ultrasound would let us check the physical structure of my parts. It was possible there was a ruptured cyst or some other structural abnormality that was causing problems. This test would show it.
I was able to get a quick appointment in just a couple days. Turns out this kind of ultrasound involves you drinking 24 ounces of water an hour beforehand, and not using the bahtroom until it’s done. That’s so your organs are in the right place, and your bladder is nice and easy to see through with the scan.
Unfortunately, the scan involves the technician digging their scanner into your very full bladder to look at your uterus. This was extremely uncomfortable to say the least. They also did an internal scan for good measure, which I didn’t need a full bladder for, thank God. The results came back at the beginning of the week. Nothing to worry about. So most likely, I am not cancer-ridden or dying of some kind of hideous internal injury.
What’s Left?
So if none of that was it… we’re pretty much left with “hormonal abnormalities.” Most likely, what is happening is that I am constantly on my period for reasons entirely unknown.
There isn’t a lot of data on how the mRNA vaccines affect vagina-havers, since this is a very new technology. And therefore, there isn’t a lot known about how to fix weird side-effects like this. The more common (and thus well-known) period disruptions after these types of vaccines are having worse periods that stabilize and return to normal in a couple months.
It has now been more like 5 months, and my period did kind of the opposite.
So what’s to be done? Well, on the advice of my therapist/nutritionist/main doctor, I’ve begun a supplement called Vitex. There are a number of herbal remedies that support regular monthly cycles and hormone levels for uterus-havers. The chaste tree is one such thing. If I’m very lucky, a couple months of taking it once a day will straighten out my issue and bring me back to only regretting being biologically female for 5 days out of a month.
If I’m not, I may have to try other options. Femmenessnce is a broader-spectrum, far more complex option. I’ve actually tried it once before, and it was helping… but something about it also upset my intestines. Which was mightily disappointing. So I stopped taking it.
Since then my diet has changed to be a lot more healthy, what with the minimizing sugar intake and the eating mainly whole foods. So it’s possible I might have better results if I try it again sometime.
With luck though, I won’t have to.
This is about as resolved as this phenomenon is going to be for a while. Wish me luck in my quest to stop bleeding forever, friends. And rejoice with me, because I don’t have cancer!
realisticautistic 