PaNik5717

Wow! All of this health stuff sure is teaching us all a lot. I live at 6500 feet and was totally scared to go skiing this winter at 13,000 feet. My 8.8 was way too low for altitude, as you can imagine if you have had 8.8 at sea level. I was scared that I would faint on the slopes. I did go a few times, but I was only able to go for a few hours at a time.

As for flying, I would think it would depend on flying altitude and on the size of the plane. Little puddle jumper planes like the American Eagle planes aren't pressurized, are they? In those, the O2 probably gets really thin. When you don't have enough hemoglobin to transport the 02 and there isn't enough 02 to bind with what you've got, life can get rough.

As for heavy bleeding, I had an episode where I was going through one overnight pad an hour and that is considered excessive - and that was in the middle of my cycle. I had to take 6 bcp's a day to stop it. I would guess that changing tampons every hour would be excessive. Every two hours has to be considered heavy, at least. I would use tampons, but mine never get "full." I always have to use a back-up pad and it does seem harder to gauge how much blood you lose.

As for clots, they occur when the blood stays too long in your vagina. During your period, there is an anti-clotting factor in your uterus that helps the blood flow out. If there is a tampon which traps the blood in teh vagina, I am guessing there will be more clots. But if the only traffic in there is blood and there is so much that it can't get out before it develops into a big clot - like the size of the palm of your hand - that is also excessive bleeding. Smaller clots are totally normal.

Losing any blood when your body is working so hard to make it can be really depressing - when you are sleeping so much, tired, weak, out of breath, and dizzy. If you have heavy bleeding and it sounds like a lot of us do, talk to your doc about skipping the placebo pills for three months or more so that it's not like filling a bucket with a hole in it. My doc gives me free samples of Yasmin so I don't have to fight my insurance to get three packs each month.

I talked to my doc again today and she said it is really tough to tell which comes first, the anemia or the bleeding, but they do seem to occur together. She is committed to helping me stay at 13 and figuring out what the underlying cause is.

This is sort of a gross topic, but I am glad someone brought it up. Really, my entire town knows about my bleeding now and it has become an easy topic for me. Keep writing about it and you should have a really easy time talking to your doc about what should be right for you.

Best wishes. I think I am spending too much time on-line!

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Total abdominal hysterectomy at age 26 due to abnormal bleeding. Kept ovaries.