Rainbow’s Story

Rain­bow dis­co­ve­red that the lack of ovu­la­tion and Dys­func­tio­nal Ute­rine Blee­ding was almost rever­sed with thy­roid treat­ment. Now she looks for­ward to get­ting preg­nant – something she thought was impossible.

I began mens­trua­ting on my 13^th birth­day. For the first two years, my periods were heavy with cram­ping, but normal.

Then at age 15,  I began blee­ding every two weeks. These periods of blee­ding always las­ted for seve­ral days and resem­bled a nor­mal period, so I thought I was mens­trua­ting every 2 weeks. I went to a gyne­co­lo­gist who told me that it was nor­mal for tee­na­gers to have irre­gu­lar periods and that taking birth con­trol pills would fix my pro­blem until my body fixed itself. Not kno­wing any bet­ter, I follo­wed her ins­truc­tions and star­ted the pill.

At the age of 19, I went off the pill to see if my body had “fixed itself” yet. It had not. So I tried the Depo Pro­vera shot, which was sup­po­sed to keep you from having periods at all. Ins­tead, it cau­sed me to bleed CONSTANTLY. The blee­ding was very light, but extre­mely anno­ying as you can ima­gine. So when the time came for a repeat shot, I went back on the pill instead.

Every 2 to 3 years I would stop the pill for a month to see if my body had finally got­ten a clue, but ine­vi­tably, I’d bleed every two weeks.

When I reached the age of 26, I star­ted get­ting con­cer­ned.  I knew I’d never be able to get preg­nant if my mens­trual cyc­les were only 14 days long. I went to a gyne­co­lo­gist who lis­te­ned to my symp­toms and diag­no­sed me with PCOS, even though my blood­work and pel­vic ultra­sound did not match the diag­no­sis. He told me to stay on birth con­trol to “keep the PCOS from get­ting worse.” I wasn’t trying to get preg­nant at the time, so I did what he said.

Then at age 28, I got married, and couldn’t ignore the issue any lon­ger. I began researching PCOS and found that I didn’t match the diag­no­sis at all. Indi­vi­duals with PCOS typi­cally have very long cyc­les — not very short ones. They’re also typi­cally over­weight with insu­lin resis­tance — issues which I did not have. In my research, I also found a term for what I had been expe­rien­cing — ano­vu­la­tory blee­ding, also known as Dys­func­tio­nal ute­rine blee­ding (DUB) — and I rea­li­zed that this meant I was not ovulating.

Around this same time, I began expe­rien­cing many hypothy­roid symp­toms such as fati­gue, brain fog, always cold, and joint pain in my legs. I went to an endoc­ri­no­lo­gist and was finally diag­no­sed with Hashimoto’s Hypothy­roi­dism. I men­tio­ned the ano­vu­la­tory blee­ding to him, but he bla­med it on the false PCOS diag­no­sis and told me to stay on birth con­trol. I’d had enough by this point, so I stop­ped the birth con­trol on my own and at the same time began the presc­rip­tion of Levoxyl (synthe­tic T4).  That very first cycle on the Levoxyl, I ovu­la­ted and did not expe­rience any midcycle blee­ding! Finally the mys­tery had been solved!

I still have a ways to go to get opti­mi­zed. I was­ted seve­ral months on Levoxyl and then too-low doses of Armour desic­ca­ted thy­roid. But I am currently on Cyno­mel (T3) to clear out Reverse T3 and then plan to return to one of the natu­ral desic­ca­ted thy­roid pro­ducts.  Bet­ween that and the hydro­cor­ti­sone I’m on for my Adre­nal Fati­gue, I am finally making progress.

My cyc­les are still not per­fect. I now have a luteal phase defect, most likely due to 14 long years on birth con­trol. But get­ting my body ovu­la­ting was half the battle. I am con­fi­dent that once I’m well enough to start trying, I will be able to get preg­nant. I only wish I had known soo­ner that ano­vu­la­tion could be a symp­tom of thy­roid disease. I could have saved myself a lot of heartache!