I presume that after your cancer treatment you are taking extra care with lifestyle (exercise, alcohol etc), diet and weight to minimise any chances of cancer of any sort recurring? I hope you don't mind my saying - as I am sure you will already be doing all you can!
You know Hurdity; Before being diagnosed I was perfect BMI, teetotal for 20 years, don't smoke, am a pescetarian (only eats fish as a meat source) who eats vasts amounts of vegetables, pluses, nuts and healthy home cooked foods. Ok, so my exercise isn't rigorous, but I am very active and do a lot of hill dog-walking, gardening and physical activity in my working roles. Never taken any hormone medications including the pill, gave birth, no genetic link either. There is nothing in my background that would have screamed 'risk factor', it was purely unlucky and if it reccurs it will also be unlucky. I spent a long time, as many women do, feeling guilt about having caused it and analysing their past, so I make a deliberate effort to be honest to not worry too much about life factors and try to live it with as much vigour as I can currently muster lol My oncologist said to just go out and live and not concern yourself about obsessing over diet and so on, so I do that; eat plenty of cake, chocolate and do lots of what I enjoy.
I've read the article a few times now Hurdity, I understand all the loops and feedback, this failing and that failing and dropping, eggs and ovaries and so on ....but it doesn't describe the actual point by point hormonal reason for stop start periods. I know what in general is happening to me and the reasons for the irregularity.
Maybe I'm expecting to understand something that I can't, in detail of knowing what is rising, falling and so on differently to usual in this particular period only. I mean - in this case is it - non-egg production, High FSH, Low progesterone or high oestrogen...you get what I mean....the specific relationship between all the variables that produces this outcome, this month. Ignore me, LOL, I know what I mean. I analyse each period, as each one is different to try and figure out the physiological causes that particular month. By applying some logic, to what feels entirely randomly changing I thought it might help. Maybe I just have to accept that I won't know or understand, as I'm never going to understand the complexities of all the reproductive hormones.
Thanks for all your help, I appreciate it.
Sounds like you and your oncologist have the right attitude following your cancer - mkae this most of your life without worerying too much about the ifs and buts and whys and wherefores - I know I would be the same as you in your position. Like you, I live as healthy a lifestyle now as I possibly can - but you never know what's round the corner and sometimes you can't do anything about it. All I do at least is minimise the chances of things I have control over (diet, exercise or lack of it etc) deciding my fate for me!!
re the hormones I don't think anyone can know what is happening in any particular woman's body in terms of hormones - you cano nly guess at a number of possible explanations.
By this I mean - during peri-menopause there is a lot of irregular bleeding, variable length cycles, heavy and light (or continuous or absent) flow.
In a normal menstrual cycle, the bleeding is expected and normal - and is caused by the fall in progesterone due to the lack of fertilisation of the released egg - progesterone withdrawal bleeding.
Any other type of bleeding is to some extent abnormal bleeding. What often happens during peri-menopause and the anovulatory cycles, as we've discussed - is that the womb lining continues to build up because there is no egg produced. Sometimes when it gets to a certain thickness, it starts to fragment and spontaneously break away - causing bleeding. This is not usually accompanied by typical pms symptoms (because there is no ovulation, no porgesterone rise and fall aand probably no dramatic oestrogen dip).
In addition there is another common type of bleeding which some women get when oestrogen dips suddenly even though ovulation hasn't taken place - and this can happen during peri-mebnopause when lots of follicles start to grow but there is no dominant follicle. All these follicles produce oestrogen and when they fail to develop, oestrogen production falls - which can also sometimes causes bleeding (if the lining has developed sufficiently).
Some of the apparent two week "cycles" may not in fact be true cycles - so do you see how difficult it is to say what is actually happening to you?
I hope this explains a little why it is more complicated but sorry I can't really answer what you want to know!
Hurdity x