I’m posting in general health rather than gynae, due to the question being more about medication than the symptoms I’m taking the meds for.
I’m 53 in a couple of months but still having periods. The timing of them is starting to go haywire. I also have multiple fibroids. One is on a stalk coming out of the top / front of the uterus, and medium sized at 7 x 6cm. It’s either this fibroid or endometriosis that causes me agonising pain in the second half of my cycle - sometimes a week to ten days before the onset of bleeding.
It is very weird pain and not ‘organic’ or natural. It feels very obviously like something has gone wrong inside my body. I go from being in no pain at all to a lot of extreme pain inside about 3 minutes. There is no gradual build up. And wow! It really does hurt - it’s cramp but also feels like a twisting knife.
So I have codeine prescribed for these episodes and generally take it quickly. There follows 15 very intense minutes while it takes effect.
The pain then dies away or I’m able to go back to sleep. I’m then pain free, and because I’ve taken an opiate, I can’t always tell if I’m pain free because the codeine has obliterated the pain, or if the pain has died down and gone away on its own. It is the pain of a fibroidy (and possibly endometriosis-ridden) uterus, so rears up very quickly and possibly subsides just as fast.
Im puzzled about my reaction to codeine. It seems to sort out my pain very quickly (and I’m not exaggerating when I say it’s agony), and then leave me feeling extremely groggy for the next 12 hours. This is from a single tablet of 30mg codeine phosphate (or sometimes, 30mg codeine with paracetamol), so not the smallest dose of 15mg but hardly a massive dose, either.
i only take codeine when I’m in lots of pain, so less often than once a month now. I never take it , let’s say, ‘recreationally’.
Does what I’ve described sound like someone who is a super-rapid metaboliser of codeine? I’d be interested in opinions if anyone knows about codeine and metabolism.
btw, I know I could have a hysterectomy, but at nearly 53, I feel confident I won’t be having periods for much longer .
sorry for the length, if anyone has read this far.