A year and a half ago, I typed seven words into Google. A few clicks later, and what showed on my screen described me exactly. The result filled me with relief, but also, panic. What came next?
The words I’d typed were “hormone problems in 37-year-old woman”. But before you yawn and look away, these really were problems.
For half of every month, I felt as if I was going mad. I was so tired I could barely get out of bed – and normally I’m someone who’s up at 7am, breakfast ready, uniforms laid out, sometimes even with a workout already done.
But for half the month, when I had to get up to take my kids to school, I would do it at the last possible minute, in a rush, and some days I’d drop them at school and just come home and go straight back to bed – which is so not like me.
I was paranoid, grumpy, and easily angered. I would react to things in a way I knew wasn’t appropriate, especially with my children, but I couldn’t stop myself doing it. Most frightening of all, I was experiencing suicidal ideation – knowing I wasn’t really going to kill myself, but thinking about it, often, and knowing that if I could do it in a way where nobody else got to be hurt and I wouldn’t be in too much pain, then I’d just flick that switch. It was awful.
And it didn’t make sense. My mum suggested I was depressed, but I knew this wasn’t depression. I was happily divorced from the father of my two children – a divorce that I’d instigated myself. The kids were happy at school; I worked out four or five times a week; I ate healthily. And besides, when you’re depressed, it’s all the time. Which wasn’t the case for me.
It had taken me about a year to realise that my symptoms were linked to my menstrual cycle. I’d noticed that it was always around the time of my period that I felt like this – then my period would start and I’d feel about a million times better, as if I’d woken up from a nightmare.
What had come up on my computer screen after I typed in those words proved I wasn’t going mad. Instead, it appeared that I might be suffering with something called premenstrual dysphoric disorder, or PMDD. A severe form of PMS – it feels like PMS on acid, to be honest – it affects about one in 20 women.
Symptoms include headaches and joint pain, trouble sleeping and yes, mental and emotional symptoms, like feeling very anxious, angry, depressed, or in some cases, even suicidal. I carried on researching – I wanted to know what the treatment options were – and then booked a doctor’s appointment.
My GP was amazing. For a start, she recognised PMDD as a thing, something that I was later to find was quite unusual. I already knew that going on the contraceptive pill was one option, but the GP said that wasn’t appropriate for me. I was a smoker at the time, so there was a high risk of stroke.
The other option was antidepressants. I’d never taken antidepressants, and wasn’t keen to start, but I had discovered that it was also an option to take them for just two weeks a month, the fortnight of the madness. The doctor wasn’t so keen for that option, but said she would prefer me to do that than nothing, so she put me on SSRI sertraline.
Sarah Carter is a health and wellness expert residing in the UK. With a background in healthcare, she offers evidence-based advice on fitness, nutrition, and mental well-being, promoting healthier living for readers.
