Accident-Prone Hormones

The last couple of days have been a bit rough. I knew they were going to be. I realised last week that it was highly likely several factors – work stress, vitamin D being due, PMS, medication changes and side effects – were all going to combine into a flare. So I’d done my best to make sure I could get through it as smoothly as possible. What I wasn’t counting on, was a sudden and dramatic increase in my own accident-prone tendencies. In the last 24 hours I’ve had several mishaps ranging from completely-silly, to came-very-close-to-serious-injury in severity, and it’s left me in a pretty sore state.

I was talking with some friends the other day, about those “facts” that you believe for years because someone you trust told you them. For example, for years I believed my grandmother had stigmata because when we were little my sister told me she did. I don’t think my sister remembers this, so I have no idea whether she really believed it or if she was just messing with me, but at the time I took it as fact and it wasn’t until years later I thought to question it.

When I was a teenager, my mum told me that having PMS interferes with your depth perception. At the time, I took this as fact, not least because when she told me that I’d just opened a door into my own forehead, then misjudged the gap and hit the doorframe on the way through. She told me that she had exactly the same type of accidents herself every month.  

I didn’t question it, at the time. Honestly, I was too relieved to question it. For years I’d felt like I was loosing my mind, when I couldn’t do something as simple as walk through a doorway without injuring myself (just try explaining to someone that you really did get a black eye walking into a door, and see if they believe you) and she has finally offered a seemingly plausible explanation.

Last night after my dad came and rescued me from one of my more nasty accidents, my mum’s explanation popped into my head. For the first time, I wondered if there was any scientific basis to this, or if it was just something Mum had said to make me feel better. My PCOS symptoms have been really out of whack lately, so if it is true that could explain why the number of accidents has been worse, but I’m somewhat suspicious that I’m making connections out of random events.

So here’s my question – does anyone else experience this with PMS? Particularly anyone with PCOS/Endo or anything similar? Also if anyone with a medical background knows if there’s any truth to the idea that hormones have an impact on depth perception, I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading

Little Miss Autoimmune