DES daughter with anxiety and a mixed bag of other issues
I am a 67 year old DES daughter. My mother had a miscarriage the year before I was born and then started having problems with me- believe it was after the second month she started a course of injections. She lived to age 94, died from a stroke. Had a mass on her left ovary that didn't grow, no breast cancer. She had anxiety and panic attacks from 30s until she got sick and passed. She had diabetes and HTN.
I'd had a terrible time when young- amenorrhea, hypothyroidism, anxiety, irritability, unrelenting insomnia, yeast infections. I did manage to get pregnant finally and and after the birth of my second child, no longer had to take medication to have a period. I had a very long labor the first time and had to be induced finally. I suffered from preeclampsia that time and while I didn't have the edema the 2nd time, I had the hypertension. Vomiting most of each pregnancy and during labor. I was thankful to have the 2 kids but no more of that for me.
My periods were so bad that I was on Darvocet for 20 years , 3 days out of each cycle. Ovarian cysts that were very painful and excruciating pain on the first day when I just spotted- which decreased on the 3rd day when I started bleeding like crazy- wearing a super tampon and overnight pads in unison, changed frequently. This went on to my very last period at age 41 when I had a ruptured cyst and developed infection and had everything but my dysfunctional right over removed. What a relief! I was a new person. I had hyperprolactinemia for a long time- now I have a new breast cyst they're watching so it's back to every 6 month mammograms. I also had started perimenopause and needed to use a progesterone cream, rubbed it into my thigh every evening at bedtime at age 34. I did that for a couple years.
I've had IBS for as long as I can remember, which was diagnosed at age 15. That's still with me, along with lymphocytic colitis diagnosed nearly 10 years ago. I also suffer chronic insomnia, due to the anxiety I guess, which has been successfully managed with low dose bedtime alprazolam, which is hard to come by. I was on SSRIs and other meds for it in the past which I found I couldn't tolerate without diarrhea and abdominal pain and other weird side effects. In fact, there's a whole slew of OTC and other meds I cannot take due to the gut symptoms and side effects. Not always the common ones, but the lesser ones that only 3-5% might get. It's like all my brain and gut receptors are at war. Does anyone else have this? It's awful and I feel like everyone thinks I'm just crazy. I don't get a lot of empathy from the healthcare field in general and it's not a good feeling.
Interested in more discussions like this? Go to the Women's Health Support Group.
Connect

@lesa458, you wrote, "I also had started perimenopause and needed to use a progesterone cream, rubbed it into my thigh every evening at bedtime at age 34. I did that for a couple years."
Did you really rub the progesterone cream into your thigh? Or do you mean your external vulva or your external labia?
@cherylfromknoxvillet Yes, you are correct, the vulva. Lol...not senile, promise. A pharmacy, the Medicine Shoppe, made it up then. He mixed the powder into velvachol, I remember, maybe 3% in velvachol , in a tube. My gynecologist knew this pharamacist, said he made custom preparations. I used it for awhile, couple times a day, tapered off and then no more problems. I'd had this crazy itching so he had some blood work done on me and my estrogen was high.
I did use Divigel a few years back and that was my thigh. For dryness. I used it for a while and then weaned off. That was about my only symptom and it fixed it.
-
Like -
Helpful -
Hug
3 Reactions@lesa458
Sometimes women are too embarrassed to say "vulva," so they say the next closest body part, which would be the thigh! 😂