Friday, July 30, 2004

Too much progesterone -- looks like fibroid grew

I'm still recovering from my miscarriage post d&c and I'm thinking that my uterus is mostly back down to its smallest size, wrapped around my fibroid. I had a feeling that my fibroid grew during the early weeks of pregnancy but since the uterus was enlarged it was hard to be sure. Now though, when I lay on my stomach (doing some exercises on the floor last night) I can feel my uterus/fibroid as I lay there. Big bummer eh? (I had a 6x7cm single intramural fibroid on the right side of my uterus)

My doctor put me on supplemental progesterone since my levels tend to be low, 50 mg of progesterone via vaginal suppositories twice daily. The progesterone actually made me feel like I was on a roller
coaster -- I felt horrible. I only know it was the progesterone since I stopped taking it when we found out our embryo wasn't developing and I felt so much better.

My progesterone level when checked last fall was 9.4 ng/ml, when it
was checked when I got pregnant (about twice the number of days from
ovulation as when I had the previous test) it was 19.8 -- so it had
doubled in twice the amount of time. Studies have shown lower
progesterone levels have been linked to higher miscarriage rates
(http://www.inciid.org/fertinews/progthresh.html), although there is
some disagreement in the medical community as to whether or not
supplementing progesterone will help keep women from miscarrying.

So, I'm not sure if I just have lower progesterone and that's normal for me and it will be fine, or if it might have contributed to our loss (one can only speculate at this time). I imagine that it is possible that my progesterone was low and I needed supplemental but maybe not as much as I was given, or that maybe just the fact that my fibroid is present means that the extra progesterone is going to cause growth regardless and unless it is removed it will always cause the same problem. Hormone levels in early pregnancy aren't that high, so it is possible that this was more progesterone than I could handle and that it wasn't balanced out with the estrogen.

I'll let you know if I learn any more, if my fibroid shrinks any or
if there are new numbers from the ultrasounds I had in the past month about the size change from early June.

No comments: