Well, I've been on Premphase for the past 5 weeks. My gyn put me on it to see if it helped with the internal tremors that he said are most likely related to peri. Initially, it helped in that I didn't wake up in the middle of the night because of the internal shaking/buzzing. If I happened to wake up in the middle of the night, sometimes the tremors/buzzing would start up but I was no longer awakened by them. What a relief, not to mention getting more sleep.
At the end of the month, I spoke to my gyn again to see what my next step would be. He suggested staying on the Premphase for another month or two to see if everything evens out and/or decreases significantly. I told him that I felt better during the first two weeks of the Premphase (estrogen only) than the last two weeks (estrogen & medroxyprogesterone combon) of the pills. He said that made sense since the first 14 pills are just estrogen.
Well, bite my tongue, I spoke too soon, apparently.
Today is Day 7 of the pill pack (straight estrogen) and for the past 3 nights, I've been awakened out of a sound sleep with terrible buzzing and internal tremors, to the point where I cannot get back to sleep. I can feel it during the day again whenever I sit still (at work, watching TV, etc.) Before I fall completely out and start panicking that maybe this isn't hormone related (I think that it is but when you feel this feeling in the middle of the night, your mind thinks crazy scary things), I thought I'd ask all of you. I've been reading in this forum for the past 6 weeks and wonder if the tremoring is worse lately because my period still hasn't arrived although it's supposedly supposed to start 4-6 days into the new pack of pills on Premphase? Last month, during the first month of taking Premphase, my period started on Day 18 of the pack, into the 2nd phase of the pills. According to the gyn, withdrawal bleeding *typically* occurs on Premphase after you've finished the estrogen/medroxyprogesterone.
Well, my periods were not regular before going on Premphase so I don't know what's normal for me now that I'm on Premphase. I've been reading that the ups and downs of hormones can take place just before a period and at ovulation, etc. Could the tremors be worse now because I still haven't had withdrawal bleeding from the Premphase?
Or (and this is the scary part) is there a chance that these tremors are not hormone related at all but rather neurological from Parkinsons/MS, etc? (labs and tests at my primary care phys came back negative - my next step after gyn was a neuro consult). I keep telling myself that the symptoms got better for the first month on the Premphase which proved to me and my gyn that the tremors are hormone related. But if that's so, why are the tremors getting bad again while still on the Premphase? He said that it's a matter of fine tuning the hormone replacement to alleviate the symptoms and this makes sense but right now I'm scared again, you know?
If I could know with 100% certainty that this IS hormone related, it would help me to stop worrying. Then again, I worry about how much sleep I'm going to get until these peri symptoms go away. I'm only 44 so who knows how long before I hit menopause and then, from what I've read here, these types of symptoms don't always go away right away in menopause. Horrors. And I know that I don't want to be on HRT for all that time - the Premphase was essentially to see if it helped so we knew the genus of the internal symptoms.