Pre-Menstrual Hell

I have found it; I am in hell.  Do you want to know why?  I have pre-menstrual syndrome!  I find that to be a demeaning term, but it is the only term that can be slapped on the way I feel right now.  This kind of feeling is terrible and it's definitely the curse of humanity.  They say there is a wide variety of symptoms that go along with this problem.  The Mayo Clinic says you get everything from breast sensitivity and mood swings to depression and food cravings.  It sounds more like mental illness than a natural monthly occurrence!  With everything I have been going through in the last couple months, it's the depression and the mood swings that hit me.  Good thing that I have medication for both.  Ha!  I still feel like crying though.  Last night I was watching a movie called Sunshine Cleaning and they had this part in the movie where both of the female characters were celebrating a child's birthday party.  I couldn't help it; I just cried.  I was being so weird about things, and I kept thinking how I wouldn't be happy about my birthday for a long time.  Now I think that maybe those thoughts were probably related to the PMS condition.  When I think about it in that respect, maybe if I just ate a piece of chocolate, I wouldn't have had that problem.  That's hypothetical and I'm kind of chuckling about that.

Aside from the need for chocolate, being a woman is a hard business.  I'm sure that men aren't having an easy time either.  We get saddled with this natural mental illness.  This illness that recurs in this foreseeable fashion.  According to the American Academy of Family Physicians 85% of women, at childbearing age, have experienced symptoms from PMS.  Some women only get a couple of the symptoms and there are some who get all of them.  This actually interferes with your life, especially when some women get all of the symptoms.  I can't even imagine what that must be like.  My doctor said that my PMS is related to my clinical depression, but is also related to my seizure disorder.  There are other factors that can play a role in PMS.  Your age is one of them, unfortunately.  My PMS is worse now in my thirties than it was in my twenties and my late teens.  Coffee, tea, and caffeinated soda can also exacerbate PMS, which I didn't know until a few months ago.  The biggest factor that can trigger PMS, and most people have this in their lives, is stress.  Stress is one of the leading factors that exacerbate the symptoms for pre-menstrual syndrome, according to the Mayo Clinic.  Lately, my stress level has been high and that really makes my hormones a living hell.  I know that I go through so much during this time of the month.  My seizures increase and my headaches increase.  During the cycle of PMS, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians, migraine, depression, seizure disorders, asthma, and allergies are worsened.  Luckily, I'm able to work with my doctors and maintain control with my medications.   

At this point, I have realized that my pets are the only ones that don't make feel like screaming.  I don't have children, so they don't inflame my PMS.  I do have family though, and they are good at giving me the feeling of "hell on earth."  My situation as of late hasn't made things much easier.  I'm pretty much angry at the world sometimes when I have PMS.  Angry enough to cry at the drop of the hat, or scream if I'm alone.  I feel bad for Don, because I don't want to make him feel uncomfortable.  They say it's good to keep a calender of your symptoms so that you can better control symptoms as they arise.  I think it's great to journal, because you can put your thoughts on paper or on the computer.  It helps to release all the tension that you feel over the course of the cycle, rather than feeling the need to throw chocolate wrappers at onlookers.  It's hard to talk about it to your to your mate or husband, because they can't always understand why you feel the way you do.  I always think it's funny how men cringe when you talk about this issue.  You'd think that it was the most taboo thing in the world.  Some men won't even buy tampons for their wives or girlfriends.  Maybe it's the unpredictable nature that disturbs them, or at least it's unpredictable to them.   I think as women we are stronger than we like to admit, because we tolerate so much just in one month.  We are painted, in history, as the weak and fragile sex.  That's entirely untrue, because we are just as strong and we endure much more.