One resolution resolved

I managed to complete one of my New Year’s resolutions, only four days into the year. Not bad, eh?!

I went to an ob/gyn to talk about all the problems I’ve been having lately. (The squeamish should stop reading right here).

I explained that I’ve been having approximately 2 periods per month since September. He did a sonogram (whee! what fun) and they discovered two things: 1) my IUD is situated incorrectly, and 2) my ovaries are riddled with cysts. Either or both of these things could be what has been causing my recent problems.

The cysts are benign, and they do eventually disappear on their own, but new ones keep forming in me. Each one that disappears leaves behind a little scar tissue, and the scar tissue is almost always the site where ovarian cancer forms.

And guess what kind of cancer runs strongly in my family?

He was surprised that I have an IUD, since he said that normally they don’t put them in women who haven’t had babies because our uteruses (uteri?) are usually too small to properly hold them in place. That’s why mine shifted — inadequate uterus.

He recommended that they pull out the IUD and put me back on birth control pills. I wasn’t wild about this idea because the whole reason that I got an IUD in the first place was so I wouldn’t have to take hormone supplements every day of my life.

He explained that the IUD was very likely CAUSING the cysts in the first place, and also that birth control pills have been shown in numerous studies to decrease the risk of breast and ovarian cancer by up to 90%. If he were to take out the IUD, my cysts would probably go away on their own, and the birth control pills would prevent new ones from forming, thus probably decreasing my cancer risk.

So I had them do it. Pulling it out didn’t hurt quite as much as putting it in, but it was by no means fun. And now I’m back on birth control pills, which I’m still not wild about, but the dosage I am on is about half of what I used to take (he told me a very interesting history of dosages, and basically what they prescribe today is about half of what they prescribed in 1990 or so, when I first started taking them, and about a tenth of the dosage in the 1960s when they first came on the market).

I go back in three months for a follow up sonogram, to check on my ovaries. In the meantime, I hope that my cycles get back on a normal schedule.