I feel like I'm slowly bleeding to death while pretending it's not happening, should I "advocate" for myself with the doctors? How?

[questionzzz]

TMI and long. Please help. Nothing like this has happened to me before.

background: 45 yrs F, 2 DC, generally healthy. No former complications with childbirth, reproductive system, periods etc.

So, over the past few years I have generally had regular, fairly light periods, lasting 3 days at most. A bit of cramping and heavier flow on the 2nd day, nothing an ibuprofen couldn't take care of.
Right on the dot 5 days after my 45th bday, I start a mild spotting (last Sunday, to be precise) just less than 2 weeks after my last period. I have a bit of a panic, wonder what going on, make an appt to see family dr but that's not until 20th Sept, continuing to bleed, so on Tuesday I go to walk-in clinic and see dr who examines me, takes swabs and writes up bloodwork, also gives me a pep talk about how it's probably just "life changes".
Call back from dr following day (last Wed) saying the bloodwork returned all normal, even for peri menopause my hormones don't indicate that, so just a fluke. They'll call me if anything irregular
in the swabs, but not otherwise.
No phone call so far, thankfully.
meanwhile the blood flow is getting heavier and showing no sign of stopping.
It's been ten days now I'm bleeding, with some clots, feeling a bit weak and woozy sometimes, but otherwise no pain, no cramps or anything.
Sex last night ended up looking like a murder scene. (dr said I could have sex)
What should I do? Just wait it out? Seeing my family dr on 20 Sept. Should I just wait till then? I feel at this point I'm slowly bleeding to death but not sure what to do?

[SouthWestmom]

20 days and just merited a call back from the nurse who told me it was probably menopause and to come in and get stuff to stop it if it went on much longer. Lovely, sympathetic, but utterly i worried about it (I'm 45).

[icanclearabuffet]

Op I was examined by Gp who couldn't find anything (she just prodded my abdomen) but sent me for an Ultrasound anyway. I had to wait about 6 weeks for the ultrasound appt. So an ultrasound wouldn't be done straightaway or by walk in clinic.
Hopefully they'll refer you for one just to see what's going on.

[Flibbitygibbit]

I had this. Bled continuously from September until December last year when I had an endoscopy and the hospital said I'd got fibroids. They mentioned the word hysterectomy and miracously the bleeding stopped ! 🤷‍♀️

[Emmapeeler]

Following as I am finding this thread useful! A 47 year old friend complains of long periods (eg two weeks after one ending and lasting two weeks) and flooding as part of peri.

[Emmapeeler]

I agree about being warned! I had a bout of flooding earlier this year and went to a&e as I thought I was haemorrhaging. “Yes that can happen” said the doctor, after a four hour wait, before writing me a prescription for nohisterone and transemic acid. (Sp?)

[LilyRed]

I was unable to take tranxemic (sp?) acid as it would interact with meds I take for epilepsy; basically it was the Mirena or nothing as my healthcare area didn't offer hysterectomies except in emergency.

As someone else said, do not take meds that act as blood thinners like aspirin with this 'bloody' problem - I take it now as I have heart probs and any cut bleeds like a stuck pig; so will anything else ...

[Hollyhobbi]

I nearly bled to death from a large fibroid at the age of 46. Long story but basically my Haemoglobin dropped from 16 to 8.1. Luckily I left a completely crap Consultant after she said she was going to do nothing for me and travelled to my local large teaching hospital where I had 3 units of blood and a radical hysterectomy. The surgery was at 9.30pm and the Surgeon came round the next morning and said everything he touched was bleeding! I knew I was in trouble as I was so weak and kept licking my lips. My radial pulse was thready and my heart rate was over 130bpm. OP was is your haemoglobin level? Do you have signs of shock? If you don't and your haemoglobin is OK then you aren't going to bleed to death. Have you had a scan or ultrasound?

[timshelthechoice]

Pookie why on Earth have they not offered you a hysterectomy?

[Millie2016]

OP if I call my GP first thing in the morning I can go on a list of people who the GP calls during the day. You can discuss symptoms and if they feel it necessary they will give you a slot to go in.
Worth a try. Hope you feel better.

[namechanger0064]

The cause of my very heavy bleeding was fibroids and I didn't have any pain or cramping.

Just as an FYI I had a scan on the NHS and they didn't find anything but when I went private they found a few, and one particularly troublesome one which wasn't large at all but causing the majority of the bleeding.

I was completely fobbed off by my GP. Actually laughed in my face when I said I bled out in a business meeting and there was blood on the floor.

[PookieDo]

@timshelthechoice

Because they found I had high levels of prolactin and LH and they think I may have something wrong with my pituitary gland. Whether this is PCOS a tumour or a cyst I have no idea I have waited weeks for an appointment

Gynae does not want to start taking out my insides until that has been looked at. I see endocrinology tomorrow actually

[NotWavingButMNing]

my mom had similar very heavy periods ending with hysterectomy
I had several years of 10/14 day periods complete with clots in my late 40s.
Completely solved with a mirena coil. My gp said that years ago it would have been a hysterectomy and the mirena has spared many thousands of women from major surgery.

[LilyRed]

reading the list on the bodylogic website, irregular periods doesn't even begin to cut it; why does nobody mention the bleeds?

And during this period we, or the GP simply write off most of the rest of the symptoms as the pressures of life, work, kids and so on, no one ever mentioned the peri-menopause to me.

[FuckOffBoris]

This is the best thread I have ever read, you have all made me feel so much better. I am 44 next week and back in February I had a month long murder scene of a period, out of the blue, and the GP brushed me off. Since then I have been having longer periods with less gap in between and have been bleeding to greater or lesser extent for the last seven weeks or so. I have been to a different GP in our practice and she's referred me for a scan and said they will also do blood tests if nothing on scan, so I am waiting for the referral letter but have been beginning to panic, Google, and had more or less concluded I had all sorts of possible cancers. But I could have written most of these posts, so not quite so scared now!

[PookieDo]

Easy to say but don’t panic. I think this is very very common

[Feelingpoorlysick]

Have you heard of endometrial hyperplasia?

[SirVixofVixHall]

Classic peri meno stuff. I had flooding so horrendous that I was changing pads every few minutes at one point, it was terrible! Also v painful. I had , like you, been having lighter periods , but then came the flooding and bleeding for weeks on end. Then they got more spaced out and lighter again.
Then I went on HRT.
Of course it needs checking, but it is very, very common to have this pattern during peri menopause.

[PotterHead1985]

@PookieDo Jesus don't start me on the nappy rash. Sudocreme is my friend.

My issue isn't so much heavy flow atm it's the agony of the pain and the fact that I bleed most every day.

Anyway. Gonna finish reading the thread.

[PookieDo]

Being damp all the time is no fun. By the end of a period my bum crack is red raw