WARNING: This post will be about bodily functions and possibly words that will get you banned from talking on the floor of the House in Detroit (and possibly in Texas now too but I digress). 🙂

I've had a lot of messages asking me how everything has been going, since my post a couple of weeks ago about how I've been having breakthrough bleeding issues again. For those of you who haven't been along for this wonderful ride (let me tell you I'd much rather be on someSonoma Wine Tours than this), let me summarize the last 8 years for you.

Had Madison in 2004. I had what I call the neverending period for 6 months. My doctors call it breakthrough bleeding. I say if you have to wear a pad, it is a period. Tried one birth control, and it got it under control.

Fast forward to 2006. Had a miscarriage. Then got pregnant again and had Will in June 2007. That is where the true fun began. I literally had a period (or breakthrough bleeding) for 9 months straight. Now, ladies, think about that. Try having your monthly friend for almost a year. No, it was not fun. It sucked, because along with all that, my hormones were out of wack. It took us 10 birth control tries to find one that worked. Expensive, let me tell you. I wasn't allowed to even try generics, so that's $50 every time we changed. And birth control does quite a number on your system. There was one that made me so bat-shit crazy that my friend Elizabeth was so worried about me that she was going to drive 4 hours to make sure I called the doctor the next day. Yes, I was that out of head for a pill I took for 2 days. Then I had a hysteroscopy and D&C to make sure that there wasn't anything in there that was causing all this (and there wasn't. The inside of my uterus was pretty boring and normal). Then we started me on Seasonique. That worked for quite a while.

I'm going to pause for a moment, because this is where I normally get asked why I even have breakthrough bleeding. The way my OBGYN explained it was that I have an unstable uterine lining. In some places, it is thick and in others, it is thin. Since the lining isn't the same everywhere, it basically just starts falling off when I do things like exercise too hard. I swear breathing causes it sometimes. Sometimes I'll bleed for a day or two. Sometimes I'll bleed for months on end. Yes, it is so super fun. LOL

So back to my story, everything was going good up until a year or so ago. (Yes, this issue actually started before I lost the 50 lbs!). Every time I partook in a certain activity, I had some bleeding. From Google, I knew that the birth control was causing it, so I just sucked it up. Then I started losing weight on my Nutrisystem plan. About a month in, we (Bill and I) decided to go off the birth control because it wasn't stopping the breakthrough bleeding, and how much worse could it get (I learned I needed a medical degree before I start making decisions like this!). Did it help with losing weight? I am 100% sure it did. It also made me realize that I had some other side effects from the birth control I didn't even know I was experiencing.

So I continued to lose my weight (I'm up to 51.8 lbs lost right now). However, the breakthrough bleeding started happening all the time again. I was a wreck and made an appointment to see the OBGYN. I knew what he was going to say. See, we had this meeting 2 years ago before the last hysteroscopy. If we didn't get the bleeding under control, my choices were to get an ablation. And let me tell you, that scared me. I was way more okay with getting a partial hysterectomy (which they won't do because I am too young) than I was the ablation.

I went in and the first thing my OBGYN said was that I looked amazing. He also told me I don't have an additional 50 lbs to lose like I think I do. 🙂 He also said with my history and my not wanting to be put on anything that would cause weight gain, I was somewhat limiting my options. There was one birth control, an IUD, or an ablation. Those were my choices. We started with the birth control. The first 2 weeks were fine. It was week 3 when I started gaining a pound a day, got my second period in one month, and got horribly hormonal. Obviously, we quit that and I made another appointment to see Mr. OBGYN. At that point, we made the decision to do the ablation.

For those of you who don't know (and I didn't until all of this happened), an ablation basically burns the lining out of your uterus. They dilate your cervix and insert a slender wand into the uterus. He then opens the wand which has a triangular mesh which covers the uterus. RF energy (radio frequency energy) is then delivered into the uterus for about 90 seconds or until the lining of your uterus is basically burned out. (Gross, I know.) They then remove the wand, and you are free to go home. Some doctors do this in office. Mine, no. I'll ba having it as an outpatient procedure in combination with a hysteroscopy and a D&C on July 26th. Yes, that means no more kids, but we are done having kids anyway. The OBGYN told me that 80% of women see a decrease in bleeding after this. Since I have no other issues, he said that he sees this working for me.

Now, you may be asking why I am sharing something so personal with all of you. When I started this journey, I felt completely alone. I thought I was the only person who had this issue. Come to find it, it is a lot more common than I ever knew. I also had blogged about it, and I still get hits and comments from other women who also thought they were alone. I'm talking about the ablation, because all I could find mostly was horror stories (though I did find another blogger who was talking about it and she only recommended it). I thought my story could help someone else in the same boat. I am hoping that I am able to write a great follow-up after my ablation was over. Nobody writes when good things happen, they just complain if its bad. In person, everyone I've talked to who has had one thinks they are great. I just hope I am one of those people.