The Story of How I, a Bipolar Patient Who Had Given Up on Having Children, Was Permitted to Get Pregnant (Part 4)
In the previous two installments, I talked about how I successfully reduced my sodium valproate from 400mg to 200mg and then to 100mg, but ultimately, the suicidal impulses were so severe that I had to increase the dosage back to 200mg.
Now, if you ask whether my physical condition improved after increasing the dosage, it didn't really.
My husband and I went to my grandparents' house in the countryside of Chiba for a few days of rest and recuperation. I have always been a huge fan of the ocean—people used to say I would 'return to the wild' whenever I entered the water—but I didn't feel like swimming at all. When I finally tried to go in a little, images of myself drowning by suicide flooded my mind. It was too terrifying, and I couldn't bring myself to swim.
Seeing my 88-year-old grandmother, who is still so full of energy, doing far more housework and farm work than I could, I realized how incapable I was and ended up crying.
I also had to significantly change the plans for the honeymoon my husband and I had scheduled to avoid worsening my condition, and we had to rebook everything from flights to hotels. Even with such a minimal itinerary, the intrusive thoughts about death followed me everywhere...
(Still, being able to go on that 5-day, 4-night trip gave me a great boost in confidence and became a wonderful memory, but I will write about that later in one of the parts of the Stories of Consulting a Stranger About My Worries series.)
Looking back now, I think that during this period, the minimum amount of medication was what allowed me to somehow endure a life different from my usual routine.
Now, I have been talking mostly about my mental health, but I also have to talk about fertility from a physical perspective.
I have always had irregular periods and suffer from Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS). Simply put, it means I do not ovulate regularly every month.
Therefore, while I was trying to reduce my medication at the psychiatric clinic, I also had to visit a gynecologist and try to adjust my medication there as well.
I tried taking one tablet (2.5mg) of Letrozole during my period to help follicles grow, but at the check-up a week later, I was told they hadn't grown.
The doctor muttered, 'I guess one tablet wasn't enough...'
From there, it was decided that I would visit the gynecologist every week for check-ups, with the doctor saying, 'Well, let's keep monitoring it like this for a while.'
On that gynecological examination table where you have to lie back and spread your legs, having something inserted into your vagina, being pushed to the right to look at the right ovary, and hearing 'Hmm...', then being pushed to the left to look at the left ovary and hearing 'It doesn't seem to have grown much...', is mentally exhausting enough on its own.
Furthermore, seeing happy couples with babies or women with large bellies in the waiting room makes my mind spin with thoughts of whether I will ever be able to have a child when I am failing to reduce my psychiatric medication, or whether I am even capable of raising one, which makes it a truly painful time.
My only salvation was that Mugi always came with me to the gynecologist. (Mugi would actually hold my hand and say, 'Even if we can't have children, we can be happy just the two of us,' or gently tell me, 'It's okay to take your time, there's no rush.')
Besides, adjusting my schedule to visit the gynecologist wasn't easy. Since our situation is a bit different from others due to my mental health issues, we wanted to receive explanations as a couple. Also, since I have avoided driving a car since that incident, Mugi had to adjust his work schedule whenever we went to the gynecologist. Excluding the one week we waited for my period after the first hospital visit, I had to go to the gynecologist every week for seven weeks. It was also heart-wrenching because I had to ask him to take time out of his workday to take me, as the timing depended on when my period would arrive, and we couldn't always make time on Saturdays.
Fortunately, Mugi is a remote-first worker with flexible hours, so he was relatively accommodating, but he managed to adjust his schedule around his packed meetings for the sake of my gynecological visits.
Well, in the end, ovulation from the right ovary was confirmed in the fourth week after starting Letrozole, and I am currently under observation, told to come back when my next period arrives.
Normally, ovulation occurs about two weeks after the start of a period without Letrozole, so it seems it will take some time to adjust the gynecological medication as well.
I was debating whether to start fertility treatment at the gynecologist after finishing the reduction of my psychiatric medication or to do them in parallel, but I am glad I chose to do them in parallel.