Hi landygirl, Did you have a transvaginal ultrasound? I'm not familiar with any other kind. The transvaginal shows if your uterine lining is getting too thick. I would imagine that your's is. What happens in perimenopause is that usually we have an imbalance of our homrones, and our uterine lining builds up but doesn't shed properly....which leads to constant spotting. You definitely need a transvaginal ultrasound to determine your thickness. (They are very easy to have done. I'm having one on Wednesday). After they determine if its too thick or not, they may give you some progresterone to take, which will help shed it, or suggest a D&C to clean it out. Sometimes during perimenopause, the cells in our uterus get a little funky and they don't take orders from above very well, and some of them bleed all the time, and some hold on too long, etc. Once you get them scraped out, they seem to grow back in the proper way. Even if you didn't have the transvaginal ultrasound, I would think anything really bad would have shown up on any kind of ultrasound. I think this is just a matter of your hormones getting a bit off. Please try not to worry. I think that at least half the world of women in their 40's and 50's go through this same thing! (I had the same thing happen when I was about 48).

I had a UFE for fibroids after doing the wait and see thing for awhile until nasty symptoms became life altering. It worked great for me - though I will add that I had to have it done a second time by a more experienced IR since the first IR didn't have much experience with fibroids the size of mine. I've been reading about all kinds of fibroid treatment options and several other forums for probably five years. Everything I've read leads me to believe many gynecologists are biased against UFE and they often do not provide their patients with unbiased information about it. They are not experts on UFE - interventional radiologists are. If there's a difference of opinion on UFE, I would trust the IRs opinion. I've never heard of complications related to submucosal fibroids that would preclude the procedure. There are a couple of excellent forums on Yahoo - one for Uterine Fibroids and one for UFE called EMBO. I would highly recommend checking them out.

See if you can get the lab ranges to compare your results to. I did the progesterone test over a period of time and found that it dropped off too soon in my cycle. If they only tested you for one day, it may not tell you a lot, jmho. Don't give up on alternative medicine; there are some good treatments available. My favorite is homeopathy. Good luck! Here is a link that might be useful: Homeopathy

Absolutely. Everything you described is very common in perimenopause. There are erratic swings in hormone production throughout the transition. Estrogen and thyroid are connected, so maybe this has something to do with the thyroid nodule. My experience is that the cycles come less and less frequently. Menopause is simply a marker of one solid year with no periods. An after the fact kind of thing. Good luck, I know it's not easy. I have recently read about "the window of time for initiation of replacement therapy" theory. (Dr. JoAnn Manson) If you think that you want to do replacement therapy, it should be started shortly after cycles cease. But only if you can find a REALLY good doctor to help. It is a complicated issue and every part of your endocrine system should be looked at. Your adrenal glands, thyroid, etc. They all work together.