To be honest I should actually call this post: "What the hell was I thinking!?"  I'm sure you've had one of those moments.  Every single time I go against my intuition I have one of those moments.  I had one on Friday.

If you recall, I went off my bioidentical hormones cold turkey and if you read <a title="The Price of Spit" href="http://www.hormonesoup.com/the-benefit-of-spit/" target="_blank">that post</a> I was <em>afraid</em> it would be a wild ride!  In retrospect I should have weaned off them slowly - and whether my doctor should have known better or not is beside the point.  <em>I should have known better.   </em>And in fact, my inner voice knew better, why I didn't listen to her I'll never know.  But I'm not going to beat myself up over it.  Here's what has happened since I went off my hormones:
<h3><strong>The First Two Weeks:</strong></h3>
The first couple of weeks into my living without bioidentical hormones seemed ok and it was slowly starting to leave my mind.  It felt like I was forgetting something every night when I went to bed but I was starting to get accustomed to not reaching for my hormone cream.
<h3><strong>Mid-Cycle: Time of Ovulation &amp; Progesterone Increase</strong></h3>
Exactly two weeks into my "withdrawal" as luck would have it I received a call from my doctor's office.  They called to say my doctor wants to book me for follow-up testing due to the results of my recent ultrasound. I was instantly worried as anyone would be.

The difference here is that <em>worry doesn't describe it</em>.  It began as worry and quickly became debilitating anxiety.  No amount of reassuring me that the cysts on my ovaries are common and usually benign (non-cancerous) would settle my anxiety.  There was also a spot on my liver which is characteristic of a liver hemangioma - it was described to me as basically a tangled mass of blood vessels - again usually benign, non-symptomatic and usually just discovered by accident during an ultrasound, CT or MRI scan. More common in women than men, age 30 -  50 (me age 44), who have been pregnant (me 5 times), and related to estrogen medications (that is something I have to research - could it just be more common in women who are estrogen dominant?)

Seriously, can you believe that I received this news <em><strong>exactly</strong></em> on the day that my progesterone level should have shot up. I should have been ovulating right around this day which for most women should mean an increased production of progesterone.  I've never known why I don't seem to produce enough progesterone and I can't really say how much my body produced this month after going off progesterone.

What I can say is that over the course of the week I was overcome with anxiety over this news.  I couldn't sleep - I had trouble falling asleep and staying asleep - so was fatigued beyond belief..  My body hurt all over - anxiety hurts - every cell in my body vibrated with anxiety.  I couldn't focus on anything even when I tried.  I struggled to get through each day and put a smile on my face.
<h3><strong>My Eureka Moment!</strong></h3>
There is good news in all of this -

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