PMDD

Sometimes you just don't know how to begin. Well, hey, a photo of my wedding should break the ice?! My wedding day was superb. The church was beautiful. The bridesmaids shimmered in Cadbury's purple gowns. The Rolls Royce cars swaggered up to the gates. The champagne flowed. I married a man whom I adore and who adores me. One other small detail that probably wouldn't ordinarily get shared but was hugely important to me. I got my period. Most brides would be weeping into their something borrowed and would most certainly feel blue. I, however, suffer from PMDD and the arrival of my menstrual cycle was akin to Tom Hardy arriving on horseback and agreeing to be the vicar. Husband, if you are reading this I said, "Be the vicar." Alright, not replace you at the altar, just be there also!

Why in the name of all things ceremonial would the entrance of a weeks bloodshed be something worthy of celebration when the bleeder in question was supposed to look her finest in an ivory number? I'll tell you, it meant I could smile. It meant I could see clearly. It meant that I could laugh. It meant that I could face people. It meant I could lift my head off the pillow. It meant that I didn't feel sick, dizzy, in pain, or just plain terrified of life. Those symptoms right there are what we refer to as PMDD or to give the monster her full title, Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder.

Most people will have heard of PMS or PMT. These conditions do exist and are very real. To put them in the same bracket as PMDD though is a little like telling someone with a broken leg that they have a teeny bump that may require a band-aid. Shall I walk you through it? (Okay, if you are the girl with a broken leg, I'll carry you through it.)

In every monthly cycle, there are four stages. Let's start at menstruation — the period, the bleeding — you get that bit. It's messy granted but the hormones are playing ball and life isn't too tough as long as you didn't leave your tampax at home while out on an eight-hour car journey. After this phase is complete (roughly between five and ten days) there is a phase called the follicular phase. This phase is also a comparably gentle one where the hormones settle down and sit quietly in the classroom of the body while the other things like the brain get on with their duties.

Around seven days later there comes ovulation. This is when things start to turn nasty. You go to bed as you would, maybe with an ache or a twinge in your baby case but nothing a couple of paracetamol won't calm. You never wake up, as you know yourself will not wake up, until day one of your cycle; for the rest of this cycle, you are DEAD! Someone else wakes up. This person looks and sounds a lot like you and actually has your body. This person, however, is terrified of life. The phone rings and their heart rate rises. There is a knock at the door and they hide on the landing and just hope the FedEx man goes away. They feel nauseous and start to live on a diet of anything they personally can stomach. They are irritable and snap at anyone who does not do as expected within the five milliseconds they should have. The noise of the TV is like a sledgehammer to the brain and the conversation of the ladies on the bus is like a saw through the ears. The physical pain all over the body engulfs you and painkillers may as well be peanut butter for all the help it is.

So you stagger through ovulation like a zombie and into the luteal phase or as I like to call it, Satan's Monthly Sentence. All of the symptoms bestowed upon that person that stole your body on the night of ovulation will intensify by about a zillion times (not an exact figure). This will last roughly another 14 days. Every day. This will be all day every day...and night. There will also be a generous helping of depression and worthlessness. Not the ice cream eating, chick flick watching, onesie wearing sadness we see memed to death. This is more standing at the window staring at a reflection and wondering who the hell is that and why am I even bothering standing when all I want to do is lie down and sleep because that is the only place no-one can get me and the pain is the least horrific. It's watching your children run around saying "Mummy, look at me" with gleeful grins as you slowly process the distorted noise and try to work out who mummy is and where she has gone while the piercing sadness drills through your ever-weakening heart. It's trying not to collapse when you are shopping because the walls feel like they are closing in and you can't breathe and you don't know if you will make it out at all. That depression. That's the one I'm referring to. With some terrifying panic attacks on the top, like a really crappy ice cream sundae with a moldy cherry. Really moldy, green, furry sort of thing. So yeah, that goes on for 14 days and then PERIOD!

When the period comes, the PMDD begins to lift, albeit slowly but it starts to lift. The brain fog that stopped you being able to remember your pin number or how to cook fish fingers, that lifts. The pain that ensured your husband had to help you in and out of the bath, that lifts. The all encompassing mental lock down that questions whether you have any right to be alive, that lifts. And you wake up. You, the real you, wakes up and connects with the world again. What a roller coaster, right? Every month. Every single month of a woman with PMDD's reproductive life. For an "average woman' (not even sure what that means) this cycle will repeat 480 in her life consecutively.

You cannot get off the roller coaster without surgery. High-level life-altering surgery. You need to have a full hysterectomy and oophorectomy: take out the womb, the fallopian tubes, and the ovaries. It's major surgery. In the UK, the NHS will not put you forward for this without you proving you have bore all the children you desire too and if you are married, your husband's permission! Even writing that sentence chokes me. I have lived with PMDD for 17 years and I knew I wanted children so I kept fighting month in, month out so I could go on to be a mother. I am a mother and how lucky I am to have a beautiful daughter and son. I go on battling PMDD every month for no other reason than I am deemed too young for surgery and still of child bearing age. This is my Satanical Sentence. Some months are harder than others and I thank the universe and its fates that I have my husband and my children in my life because very often they are the ONLY things that make me fight to stay alive. This is not a plea for sympathy or a moan about being a woman. This is the truth laid bare and it is ugly really ugly. I am not alone. PMDD affects women regardless of race, weight, background, social status, age, ethnicity, religion; the only thing PMDD won't touch is men!

I urge any woman who thinks that she may be suffering from PMDD to seek help. Do not sit in silence. Do not think it is your fault. Do not think you are weak. Do not think you are not worth the help. See a doctor and be prepared to fight. You are a fighter, you fight every month. You will be told to "monitor" it. You will be told it "could be a number of things." No one knows your body like you do. Tell a friend, tell a partner, look to social media for people in the same struggle but DO NOT LET IT BEAT YOU. Half my life, I have been caged by the beat that is PMDD but half my life, I have been the lady in the top hat rocking the ivory gown and taking the world on with a smile on my face and rockets on my boots. I am not superwoman, I cry, I say i can't do it, I break down, I hurt people with my words, I isolate myself, I howl at the moon because it is not fair; but I am still here and so are you, we all are and we must always be.

PMDD you won't beat me.

I will FIGHT and I will WIN.

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