| Author | Message | ||
     Betsy Baker |
I had a total abdominal hyster- 19 days ago- Iam experiencing great mood swings inspite of the hrt patch. I seem to cry at t drop of a hat. anyone else ha hs problem? | ||
| Amy Houston |
Hello Betsy, After a hysterectomy you have removed your only source of progesterone, the ovaries. Your body can still make estrogen in the adrenals and in fat cells. Without progesterone estrogen dominates and you can definately have mood swings. I was the queen of mood swings, crying at every Hallmark commercial and getting irritated with any little thing. That has all ended now that I use progesterone cream. It totally changed my life! I use and sell AIM Renewed Balance because it really is a superior cream at an economical price. I have tried others but this cream is the best in my opinion. You simply apply 1/8 tsp to areas of thin skin once per day. (Some women apply 1/16 tsp twice per day.) In the beginning you can use more to get balanced. I highly recommend that you read the books by Dr. John R. Lee MD. "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About...." http://www.betterway2health.com/drleebooks.htm. I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to visit my web site to learn more about AIM Renewed Balance. www.betterway2health.com. Contact me with any questions. Be Well, Amy | ||
| teldia haywood |
hi betsy i had the same problems and it dont get no better i had a hyser. 4 years ago and have tryed everthing but nothing helps me i have mood swings and i still cry all the time but now im trying prometrium . i hope it helps if you need some one to talk to email me ok | ||
| christy ellis |
Betsy, Sorry you are having a hard time. I guess I am pretty lucky. I am 33yrs old, and had surgery 4 months ago and don't have any problems. Good luck, I am praying for you. Christy | ||
| Nancy B |
I'm about to have a hysterectomy in December. How long was your recovery period? What about the mood swings - Do they really get bad. I'm afraid of themood swings. I lost my husband a year ago and still have one teen age child at home. Please let me know what to expect. Hope all is well Nancy | ||
| me |
Here is some info on hysterectomy followed by what to do after having one. We highly recommend Dr John Lee's book "What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Menopause". It is very thorough and is full of practical info that unfortunately doctors are not taught. HYSTERECTOMY I have included hysterectomy here because it almost always falls under the category of an iatrogenic (i.e., physician-induced) pelvic disorder. Total hysterectomy has come to mean the removal of a woman's uterus and ovaries. Technically, a hysterectomy is only the removal of the uterus and an oophorectomy or ovariectomy is the removal of the ovaries. Since women who have had hysterectomies go into instant, surgically induced menopause, they are immediately put on hormone replacement therapy. Dr. Stanley West, chief of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at St. Vincent's Hospital in New York and the author of The Hysterectomy Hoax, believes that, in general, a hysterectomy is never necessary unless a woman has cancer. How did it come to be that every year 600,000 women are getting hysterectomies and over 500,000 of them are unnecessary? As West points out, it has more to do with outdated views of women than any physical problem women are having. West quotes an M.D. who gave a speech to the American College of Obstetrics and Gynecology in 1971 as saying, ". . . after the last planned pregnancy, the uterus becomes a useless, symptom-producing, potentially cancer-bearing organ and therefore should be removed." As recently as 1979, the head of the Harvard School of Public Health declared, "If a woman is thirty-five or forty years old and has an organ that is disease prone and of little or no further use, it might as well be removed." I'm sure these physicians have good intentions, or at least do not intend to harm their patients, but they are sadly misguided in using hysterectomy as a routine treatment. Removal of the ovaries is also known in medical terminology as female castration. Think of how men would respond if their doctors wanted to remove their testicles and prostate gland once they had all the children they wanted, and then put them on synthetic testosterone drugs. It's almost inconceivable. And yet re- moving a woman's ovaries is no less a violation and has equally devastating consequences, not the least of which are the- side effects of the synthetic hormones she is put on to replace her own. Removing the ovaries as a matter of course has gone somewhat out of fashion lately. Doctors now tell their patients that sparing the ovaries will allow them to keep producing hormones, but this is not accurate. The blood supply of the ovaries is a branch of the uterine artery that is ligated (cut and tied off) in the usual hysterectomy. The loss of this blood supply by the ovaries routinely results in loss of ovarian function. Even in cases in which the ovaries appear to be saved, they often quit functioning in two to three years. It is as if somehow the ovaries know there is no longer a uterus there and within a few years they atrophy and stop producing hormones. Hysterectomy means castration, whether or not the ovaries are involved. Hysterectomy is lucrative for the physician doing the surgery, lucrative for the pharmaceutical companies supplying the re- placement hormones (600,000 new lifelong customers each year!), and physically, mentally, and emotionally expensive for women who undergo them. The aftereffects of hysterectomy tend to be played down by the physicians who do them, but they are frequent and include fatigue, depression, headaches, heart palpitations, mood swings, hair loss, loss of sex drive, vaginal dryness, and urinary tract problems. Women who are put on estrogen after a hysterectomy have to cope with all the side effects of unopposed estrogen and, if a progestin is added, all those side effects as well. Before you submit yourself to a hysterectomy, I strongly recommend you reconsider, unless you clearly have a malignant cancer. The leading reasons given for hysterectomies are fibroids, uterine prolapse (the uterus falls from its normal position), and endometriosis. As you have read here, fibroids and endometriosis can usually be effectively helped with some natural progesterone cream, and there are many other ways to deal with uterine prolapse. If you want all the details and reasons not to have a hysterectomy, read Dr. West's book, The Hysterectomy Hoax. If you've already had a hysterectomy and are struggling with the side effects of synthetic hormone replacement therapy, ask your doctor to use natural hormones. I have my patients wean themselves off HRT by gradually (over a period of three to four months) reducing their dosage, while at the same time using progesterone cream. In those very few women who still have hot flashes or vaginal dryness, I give them some estrogen cream, usually estriol, to use intravaginally for a few months, and they are then able to taper that off. | ||
| D_Cothern |
I find this last post to be a load of spoon-fed BS. My entire maternal side of my family had malignant cancer and had to have hysterectomies. My mother died at 46 from cancer. I'd rather be RID of the cancer than try to apply a lotion/cream or whatever the "cure du jour" might be at the moment than DIE and leave my 5 kids alone. Kudos though, for the free publicity to something obviously no physician in their right mind would come out with. | ||
| dawn c |
i also had a radical hysterectomy in nov,do to cancer. but opted to keep my ovaries. i still do not feel like myself.is this normal? | ||
| ... |
Dawn, Dr Lee stated that the ovaries can dry up after the uterus is removed. If this happens then you would experience a drop in progesterone and estrogen (estrogen about 35% decline but progesterone drop very low). The may leave you feeling depressed, irritable, not sleeping as well, with low libido and just not as radiant as usual. | ||
| ET |
Dawn - I had a LAVH procedure total hysterectomy six weeks ago and a bladder sling procedure. My doctor did not put me on the estrogen patch due to finding endometriosis on the urethea that he could not remove without doing damage. He believes if I can stay off the patch for six months the endometriosis will go away, since estrogen feeds it, but told me to let him know if I had night sweats or anything. I immediately had night sweats and crying at anything. He put me on prometrium and it made a dramatic difference. I had to do the self catheter thing because of the sling procedure until just a couple of days ago, but all is getting much better there, and I am sure that was givig me some emotional grief as well. Perhaps the prometrium would help you. My doctors are wonderful and I am feeling so much better. | ||
| Sara |
Hello, I am 27 and having a hysterectomy. I will be keeping my ovaries. I have been having my period every 7 days, and loose alot of blood. I have endometrios  I also experience severe pms. I heard that there is a 50% chance I will have ovarian failure because of damaged cells during surgery. I also heard 75% of women feel relief from pms after a period of time. Although I am 100% this is what I want, (I have thought this through for years) I am still petrified. I am also excited.....I will finally be able to function normally. Can anyone give me info on pms after hysterectomy, and ovarian faliure? Please share your story..... |
