September 2007: It Turns Out I Have an "Out" Hole

Next, more tests for me, to try and figure out the spotting. Dr. J said that a polyp was a possibility. I was skeptical—everything I’d read said that bleeding caused by polyps was sporadic, and mine was like clockwork—but her proposed solution for crossing it off the list seemed simple enough, an ultrasound that involved putting a catheter up my cervix, blowing up a balloon at the end of the catheter to keep it locked in there, and then probing around to feel and look for any growth. After what I'd just seen DH go through, seemed totally doable.

If only it were that easy. My cervix decided to make it very clear, in this process, that it is an “out” hole. It does not want to be an “in” hole. After some painful pushing and probing, Dr. J eventually sort of got the catheter partially into my cervix, but not really, and she couldn’t do what she needed to. “Oh well,” she said. “You should have an HSG next anyway, and we should be able to tell from that whether you’ve got any growths in your uterus.”

A few days later, I got a call from her office. I’d finally had my progesterone tested. The medical assistant told me, “Your level is 9.1. Dr. J says we usually like to see 10.” So did that mean I was abnormal? I couldn’t really tell. A little low, I thought, since 10 was normal, but that was like getting a A-, right? But then someone online said her level was 42. So was 10 just barely normal, and was the difference between 9 and 10 a lot? Would 9.1 cause the spotting? Or was the spotting because I actually had some other problem, or was a hemophiliac? She didn’t know.

But I felt proud of myself too, because at least I’d self-diagnosed accurately--I really did have low(ish) progesterone. Unfortunately, it wasn’t doing any good. In attempting to overcome the spotting, I’d tried Vitamin B6, progesterone cream (available in health food stores, and normally used by menopausal women), acupuncture, diet changes, this weird hippie extraction called Vitex, fish oil, a tea made out of raspberry leaves, nettles, and some other yucky tasting thing boiled together (DH called that my nas-tea), Maca root (which actually tasted worse), and a variety of herbs prescribed by my acupuncturist. I’m not saying none of these things can work, but none did for me. So even though I felt good that I’d diagnosed one problem accurately, I felt pissed that the stuff that worked for other women wasn’t working for me, and scared that maybe it was because my diagnosis was incomplete.