Ahh…that wonderful time after menopause. You’ve gone you’re whole adult life bleeding every month, enduring the seemingly endless cycles of hormonal surges taking you sometimes to the outer limits of human endurance and you finally reach the end of the madness. Menopause has come and gone and you survived! Now you start to get vaginal bleeding. Is this a cruel hoax of nature or is there some rational explanation ?
As you know by know, nothing in life has a simple explanation. The best answer I’ve learned to just about any question is “it depends” unless you’re pulled over by the police and asked why you were stopped! The answer to the question “why do I have post menopausal bleeding” can be simple or complex. So let’s run through a few:
- Endometrial cancer
- Endometrial polyps
- Endometrial hyperplasia
- Endometrial atrophy
The big “C” or cancer is the biggest concern for obvious reasons. The worst thing you can do is hope you have a polyp and delay getting a definitive diagnosis because if you have cancer, the sooner it’s treated the better. Your doctor will need to get a biopsy to know about cancer.
Atrophy is a thinning of the inner lining of the uterus while hypertrophy is a thickening of the inner lining. Both can lead to bleeding. There is no good way of knowing which problem you have based just on your symptoms so the best course of action will be to see your doctor.
If you are in the Houston area, contact Houston OBGYN Dr. Lisa Otey at Greater Houston Gynecology for in-person help.
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