Lightbulb Moment

Day 19 and I am just waking up for the second time at 10:02 am. I originally woke up at 3:00 am could not go back to sleep, wrote the last two blog posts and crashed at 8:00 am. Now here we are, right in the thick of day 19. Presumably 8 days before my period will come. However, with my shorter cycles lately I will guess it will come in around 5 days. Today I am exhausted, my dissociation isn’t bad but I can tell it probably will be tomorrow. I woke up completely dryed out. I am not sure my dry eyes coordinate with my PMDD yet but I have read about a lot of people lately having issues with their eyes so I am starting to track this now too.

My lightbulb moment was a little over a year ago.

My mom had been talking to her Gyno about me and how I constantly spoke about the 9th day before my period (this day has since changed). I used to joke about being in tune with my body enough to know exactly when that day was and refer to it as my “crazy day”. My mom’s Gyno told her about PMDD and to pass along the information.

I was diagnosed that week.

It felt like I couldn’t digest information fast enough after that. Reading as much as I could and talking to my psychiatrist about my different options. My situation is a little more tricky because I am ADHD. What I also didn’t know until last year was that people who are ADHD should not take SSRIs (normally prescribed to those with PMDD) because there is a possibility of enhancing suicidal ideation. Which is something I have struggled with my entire life and was forced on to SSRIs as a kid which enhanced this problem and now I know why (more on that story later). An FDA boxed warning indicates that SSRIs may increase the risk of suicidal thinking and behavior (although not completed)(Fleming, 2021).

ADHD is already associated with high risk of suicidal behaviors. ADHD-I and ADHD-C were strongly associated with suicidal behaviors independent of comorbidities. The finding suggests the importance of addressing ADHD symptoms in suicide prevention (Shen, 2021).

I am still on the lookout for a study that goes into the details of SSRIs and ADHD, so I want to be completely trasnparent about that. I am a scientist but I am not a doctor and my doctor is the one who informed me of this. Though it is still important for me to do my due diligence to find that information. Either way living with suicidal ideation is not the ideal. Luckily, I have gotten to a point where I can kind of keep the ideation seperate from reality. I can feel the suicidal thoughts but now that I know why they are happening it makes it a little easier to get through those periods. I just don’t let myself get as far into the ideation anymore because I know it’s not how I normally feel.

PMDD Awareness is Suicide Prevention.

PMDD Awareness is Suicide Prevention.

PMDD Awareness is Suicide Prevention.

Shen, Y., Chan, B.S.M., Huang, C. et al. Suicidal behaviors and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD): a cross-sectional study among Chinese medical college students. BMC Psychiatry 21, 258 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12888-021-03247-6

Flemming, Mayo Clinic Neurology Board Review 2021.