My cycle came back after six years and I cried in the bathroom

Started 19 February 2025 · 21 replies · 211 hearts · read 3k times

AbelAddis Ababa, ET · 19 February 2025

1.4 years ago

My cycle came back after six years and I cried in the bathroom — putting it in its own thread so it does not get lost in the check-in.

Some background first, because it matters for the question.

What I cannot work out is which of the two stories a particular change belongs to, and I suspect nobody can tell me from the outside.

The overlap in symptoms is the difficulty. Two things producing similar sensations and no obvious way to tell them apart from the inside.

Six years is the honest figure, taken from the two-line diary I keep rather than from memory, and memory had it lower.

Not looking for interpretation of anything. Looking for what other people asked for and whether it helped.

NualaArmagh, NI

My bloods moved in a direction my GP described as encouraging, and she then spent nine minutes explaining what that did and did not mean, which was the useful part.

11me too 3

IzzyWatford, UK

Something I did not expect was how much of my long-standing hunger pattern was not a character flaw. That took a while to sit with.

GittaBonn, DE

The dismissal is the part that lingers. The physical side has been manageable; being disbelieved for a decade is what I am still working through.

MiraFacilitatorRotterdam, Netherlands

I want to slow this down. Several people here have the same diagnosis and quite different pictures, which is ordinary and is why the specifics change the answer.

BeaDublin, IE

Mira said something I want to sit with for a second.

My cycles changed within about four months, which nobody had told me to expect and which turned out to be the thing I most wanted to talk about.

RuaridhFort William, UK

What I would say is bring the whole history to the appointment. Mine was treated as a new problem for years because nobody joined the dots backwards.

SalmaManchester, UK

Coming back two years on to say things are steady, that my cycles are regular for the first time in my adult life, and that I am still slightly astonished by it.

MaryamBirmingham, UK

Here, reading, and glad you posted.

10me too 4

PoppyLeeds, UK

Reading Maryam, I recognised more of that than I expected to.

What I found is that my symptoms moved at different speeds. Some things changed in months and others have not changed at all in two years.

AmmiKarachi, PK

#10

Somebody here pointed out that most of the general advice is written for people without this, and once I stopped trying to make it fit I did much better.

CloverTotnes, UK

#11

I asked specifically about the fertility side before starting and got a clear answer and a plan, and I would push anybody to have that conversation early.

MapleToronto, CA

#12

The hair side of things is its own subject and I found the general advice unhelpful because it did not account for the underlying picture at all.

SorayaTehran, IR

#13

Maple — yes, and the bit that took me longest to accept was the next part.

Fifteen years of being told to try harder, and then one appointment where somebody actually explained the insulin side of it. I was furious for a month and then relieved.

7me too 1

PrunellaBury St Edmunds, UK

#14

I have been under a specialist throughout and I would say that made an enormous difference compared to being managed generally.

SaoirseKilkenny, IE

#15

Nothing here is medical advice, and with this in particular the specialist who knows your history is worth more than any consensus in a thread.

CoralieMarseille, FR

#16

That is a kinder way of putting it than I have managed about myself.

MaritGroningen, NL

#17

The question I wish I had asked earlier was what specifically we were aiming to change, because "improve" turned out to mean four different things to four clinicians.

HannahSheffield, UK

#18

I keep a very simple cycle note alongside everything else and the correlation is visible over a year in a way it never is over a month.

10me too 6

LuPreston, UK

#19

My cycles came back after years of nothing and it was genuinely emotional and I had absolutely nobody to tell until this circle.

12me too 9

MiraFacilitatorRotterdam, Netherlands

#20

Adding a marker: the practical sentences about appointments are the ones I would want a newcomer to find, and they are almost never the ones at the top of a thread.

OdileMontreal, CA

#21

What worked for me practically was resistance work twice a week. Not for any aesthetic reason — the effect on how I felt was noticeable within two months.