I Suppressed My Periods To Save My Health

This piece by Michelle Marie Wallace originally appeared on The Establishment, an independent multimedia site founded and run by women. “Maybe I should stop my periods.” It wasn’t something I had ever before considered and I had, in fact, wondered if there could be potential, unknown, long-term ramifications when friends of mine stopped theirs. I had never considered my periods an inconvenience or gross or annoying; in fact, I had liked the rhythm of them. The times I had been on birth control I resented how it made me feel divorced from my body. When I asked this question, I was sitting in my doctor’s office, nine months into antiviral treatment for chronic fatigue syndrome, 11 years after starting treatment for Lyme disease. The previous year had been hard. Though I had been significantly healthier than I’d been in a long time and had started running again, working hours that were closer to full-time and going out with friends, every month, in the week before my period, I collapsed. In these weeks, I felt ragged, frayed; the simple act of my body functioning with regulatory actions felt like too much of a drain. My life required too much of me in these weeks and I’d stumble through work, cancel plans, and do as little as possible. I’d get cold and not be able to warm up again, no matter how many burning hot showers I took; fevers would flash through me, but I never retained the heat and I’d collapse in a heap of...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news