The Grenade Inside Me…
PMDD is defined by MIND as:
“Premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD) is a very severe form of premenstrual syndrome (PMS).
It causes a range of emotional and physical symptoms every month during the week or two before your period. It's sometimes referred to as 'severe PMS'.”
When I was fifteen, as part of my English A Level studies, I read an extract from Nellie Bly’s Ten Days in a Mad House, and it was that extract that determined that I wanted to be a journalist.
In 2019, I got my NCTJ and was accepted onto the BBC’s Journalism Trainee Scheme, and by 2020, I had a continuing contract with BBC Newsround.
By 2023, PMDD had convinced me I wasn’t good enough, and I handed in my notice.
In 2023, I joined the NSPCC’s marketing team – PMDD gave me just five months of enjoyment in the role before convincing me I wasn’t good enough, and I handed in my notice.
In 2025, I have four children, a husband, a cat, and a home. I have what most people dream of as a picture-perfect family.
In 2025, PMDD convinced me I wasn’t a good enough mother, wife, or human, and I tried to terminate my contract with life twice in 48 hours.
On Friday, 7th November, I woke up and knew I was going to end my life. I texted my husband’s parents and asked them for help taking the children to school. I dressed the children, kissed them goodbye, and clung to them each for an extra moment. I was furious with my husband because I wasn’t enough for him; I couldn’t be the woman he wanted me to be. He had abandoned me, and I was worthless without him.
Or so PMDD had told me that morning. It does that — it lies.
I took an overdose and, in a moment, regretted it. I rang my sister in that moment of clarity, and she took me to A&E, where, after a four-hour wait, feeling suicidal, I was asked by a mental health professional: “PMDD? What’s that? Never heard of it, can you explain it to me?”
I was exhausted; I wanted to be dead. Yet this person needed me to spell out what was happening to me.
As I started to speak, my sister swooped in like a knight in shining armour, ready for battle with her definitions and knowledge.
“Oh, so you need gynae then, not us,” the mental health professional sighed, with what I interpreted as relief — one less mountain of paperwork for him.
“No,” I replied. “I need help. I want to be dead. The only way I’ll stop cycling is if I am dead.”
“We can’t help with that. We will ring gynae.”
Because the overdose I had taken wasn’t “enough” to cause harm, I felt I just looked hysterical.
Maybe it was a mission for gynae, but I felt like stepping onto a train track to stop the cycle.
I am no medical expert, but I can tell you what happened to me personally, and what I believe to be true.
In August 2024, just before the birth of our last child, my husband told my health visitor he was afraid of my periods coming back.
I laughed.
Neither one of them did.
He explained that ten days before my period, he felt like he was married to a completely different person.
Someone who was overly anxious, paranoid, had no self-esteem, and became blinded by rage and a fear of abandonment, which led me to spiral and eventually have thoughts that it would be better if I wasn’t here.
He explained that within mere minutes of my bleeding, his wife was back.
I was shocked. He was pitch-perfect in what he was saying.
I added:
“Yes, and I feel like burning my whole life down. Quitting my job, getting a divorce, running away, but when I bleed it goes away — but that’s just anxiety and PMS, right?”
WRONG.
I don’t really have “faith,” but I do believe in fate; it just so happens this health visitor had PMDD and had just been trained in how to spot it.
She referred me to gynaecology and the perinatal team, and after solidifying, through cycle/symptom mapping and various appointments, that it was PMDD, I was started on Prostap injections.
A three-month dose of leuprorelin acetate put me into a chemical menopause, and so I didn’t rocket into a world of hot sweats and brain fog. I was to take “add-back HRT”.
Someone had listened to me; the cycle was going to break.
WRONG.
After four months of on-and-off cycles, an intentional overdose, and feeling like I was trapped on a Ferris wheel of hell, the PMDD specialist and her team gave me some hope in the form of oestrogen.
The best six weeks of my life.
I was having intrusive thoughts but handling them with the perinatal team’s DBT support group skills, and I didn’t cycle. Life was good. The cycle was broken.
WRONG.
As a woman with a womb, oestrogen alone can cause the lining to thicken, increasing the risk of cancer.
After six weeks of using oestrogen alongside the jab, I was advised to reintroduce progesterone to protect my womb lining.
Protect?
BOOM.
Within 48 hours of using the progesterone, it felt like I had pulled the pin on a grenade in my body.
The monster was back, and with a vengeance.
So, I did. I tried to end the cycle.
On Friday, 7th November 2025, I tried to end my life. I was sent home with my sister to await the crisis team.
On Saturday, 8th November 2025, I obliterated my whole life. I asked my sisters to take my children. I held them even closer this time when saying goodbye, because I was determined to succeed in ending my life.
The crisis team came out; I don’t remember what they said verbatim, but it was along the lines of, “There are no beds, so you’ll have to wait it out at home.”
My husband discovered I had taken a second overdose and rang an ambulance. I sat for three days in an A&E ward.
The first night, the crisis team didn’t see me until 4:00 am, and when they did, they told me everyone has bad hormones, and I’ll get over it.
The second day, the mental health professionals passed by my bed where I sobbed, desperate for answers to stop the cycle.
They asked, “Are you okay?”
I wept, “No.”
They said they’d see me again in 30 minutes.
This was repeated for 72 hours.
30-minute checks with a mental health professional, asking are you okay? Not really wanting an answer.
Behind the scenes, without my knowledge, the perinatal team was putting together a plan, but no one told me; zero communication.
I was left scared, alone, suicidal, waiting for a bed in a mental health hospital.
As the progesterone left my body, so did the desire to be dead.
BINGO.
Progesterone is my grenade pin; pop it in my body, and it will obliterate my sense of self-worth. It will burn down my resilience, it will open fire on my rational mind, and it will put my PMDD on steroids.
But the damage was done. I was waiting for a bed to voluntarily admit myself into a mental health hospital because I was so desperate for this to be over.
I was transferred at 19:00 on the third night.
In the time I spent between A&E and the specialist mental health unit, not one professional knew what PMDD was.
I spoke with three psychiatrists during that time and countless mental health professionals.
Nellie Bly did ten days in the “mad house.” My days in the “mad house” were incredibly short; in fact, I did less than a day.
The walls in a place built to rebuild the most vulnerable in our society were crumbling, mould grew in places people were meant to be cleaned, and staff trained to help were more interested in how to use the camera on their phone.
I knew that now I noticed these things; my cycle had stopped.
I had returned to my body.
I was rational, calm, and regretful.
I wanted my children back. My husband. I wanted the safety of my warm, loving home. My cat. Silence. My heated blanket and king-sized bed.
War was over, for now.
What I wasn’t told until my own peace-brokers, the perinatal team, spoke to me was that I was to stop taking the progesterone, continue taking oestrogen, and the PMDD specialist would refer me for surgery at my next appointment.
I owe my life to the hope the PMDD specialist and the perinatal team gave me.
I am to continue therapy with the perinatal team and hopefully manage until my name is at the top of the hysterectomy list.
A twelve-month wait — twelve more cycles.
As I write this, I fear the war brewing inside me; another cycle looms. I hope oestrogen and the Prostap injection have created a treaty with my body — a ceasefire until the bomb squad, dressed as surgeons, come to remove the grenade inside me.
