PMDD Awareness with Marybeth Bohn - Part 1: Christina's Story

Christina Bohn was misdiagnosed for years. Christina lived with a debilitating disorder: premenstrual dysphoric disorder. She didn't know about pmdd and her mental health issues were not linked to her menstrual cycle until it was too late. Her mother is joining me today to share Christina's story and increase awareness and understanding of pmdd. We want you, your doctor, your family, and everyone to know about pmdd. Let's decrease unnecessary suffering. Let's get women the support they need. Let's help to decrease misdiagnosis of health problems.

Take Aways

• Christina died because of premenstrual dysphoric disorder 
• Christina had sought help from mental health professionals and doctors for 11+ years
• Marybeth and her husband Steve now spread awareness of PMDD through the Christina Bohn Foundation
• Christina was happy, musical, academically high achieving, and active growing up
• Her mom, Marybeth, noticed that sometimes Christina had big/unusual reactions, but was extremely capable most of the time.
• When Christina was finishing her last semester of nursing school, her mom noticed something was off. 
• Christina worried a lot about her nursing exams (which she aced).
• During Christina's career, at times she voiced to her mom that she was a terrible employee and that her employers regretted hiring her. Neither of which was true.
• Christina was suicidal at times and would take herself to the emergency room for help.
• Marybeth believes hormonal birth control totally changed Christina's world for the worse.
• Christina was really good at how she was feeling inside.
• Marybeth and Steve tried to perceive Christina's needs and meet them.
• In 2020, Christina was required to undergo Electroconvulsive therapy for treatment resistant depression. She'd admitted herself to the ER the previous day, but now felt good physically and clear of mind. They would not let her go home (from ER) until she had done the first treatment.
• Christina was required to continue ECT. She was supposed to do 12 sessions in 1 months time. Throughout treatment, she expressed to her mom that her brain was being fried, her memory was being erased, and she was exhausted. 
• When Christina told her doctor she wanted to stop ECT (this would be her tenth round), the doctor yelled at her

Want to feel better? I'd love to help. Book a 30 minute call with me (Heidi) here. 

Heidi's links:

• Heidi's website
• Heidi's Instagram

Are you here for pmdd support? I've got you.

• 5 Ways To Feeling Better with PMDD: I created this free download to help women with pmdd feel better. I wish it had been around when I first learned I had pmdd. 
• Semaine PMS and Period Support Supplements: These supplements have reduced cramps and helped level emotional downs that I (and my teen daughter) experience. Book a one off support call Just need some friendly advice about your pmdd journey? A support call is Free support call with me. 

Music 

• Music- Island Breeze by Surf House Productions |...

Transcript

Ep 97 PMDD Awareness with Marybeth Bohn - Part 1: Christina's Story

[00:00:00] Hello, this is the Living Well with PMDD podcast. I'm your host, Heidi Bradford, certified life coach, mom of five and PMDD Survivor. Happy to have you here. This podcast is for informational and educational purposes only, and should not be considered health advice.

Okay, welcome everyone to the podcast today. We have a special guest with us, Mary Beth Bone. This episode is about PMDD awareness, premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder. I wanna start by sharing our connection.

It's very unique and I would not be surprised, Mary Beth, if this ends up being the most listened to podcast, evolve, the ones I do 10 years from now, I would not be surprised.

Well, right now I'm covered with goosebumps. If that tells you anything that you've said about our special connection and [00:01:00] everything. I just got lots of goosebumps. I don't think it's accidental that we found each other.

I learned about PMDD four years ago because, a girl died. And she, this girl ends up being Marybeth's daughter. 

my daughter Christina died because of premenstrual dysphoric disorder and before any family member, friend or colleague wants to sound dismissive or run out of patience. I'm gonna beg you to love your loved one dearly and take care of them because PMDD is really hard to deal with and you don't know when it's gonna hit.

Mary Beth, give us some details about you, where you live, uh, about your family.

Okay. Well, I'm Mary Beth Bone and I live right now in Missouri with my husband Steve. When we met, we were in Utah [00:02:00] and then we moved back to Southern California where we were there for five years. That's where I grew up. Then we moved across the country to Pennsylvania.

We were in Pennsylvania three and a half years. Then we moved to Texas. Our girls, Marissa and Christina, our two daughters, they really considered Texas to be their home state because we were there during all their school years. Then we moved to Missouri as empty nesters.

What's was your career job? The last few years? Yeah when the girls were growing up, I just did part-time because I really wanted to keep the girls schedule. And then when we came to Missouri, I was really intimidated about working full-time and I had job interviews set up at the University of Missouri and I was scared to death 'cause I thought they're gonna look at me and think, Ugh, you haven't really worked in 20 years. I got job offers. I mean, every place I interviewed. I felt so grateful. ' I ended up choosing to go to the Missouri Orthopedic Institute, which is the orthopedic hospital on [00:03:00] the University of Missouri, campus in their healthcare system.

I was told that had a culture that no one else knew how to duplicate and I thought, I wanna be part of that. I ended up supporting the chairman of orthopedic surgery. That's where I spent the majority of my time there. After I got my foot in the door, then I worked for orthopedic trauma surgeons.

Then I moved over to working for the chairman. I got an impression one day that it was time to leave ortho. And I could not imagine because my boss is, um, probably one of the busier people on Earth and traveling internationally all the time. There was never a dull moment. It was impossible to be bored, but I followed that impression I received.

While it was hard to leave orthopedics, I knew I had to . We've all received those impressions that if we don't follow those, we might not ever get those impressions again. You know, they're important. Um, life changing. I moved over to the Office of Research, but it happened to be on the first day of the COVID shutdown.

Had I still been on the healthcare side of University of Missouri, I would've been required to be at work every day. But [00:04:00] because I was on the campus side, I was working from home in my basement, had the whole office set up with multiple screens, the whole thing. And then Christina came home to us. So Christina was able to be with me every single day.

It was the biggest blessing ever. And then when it was time for staff to go back, to work in their offices, I received a phone call saying, we're circling the wagons for you. We're protecting you. You need to stay home with your daughter. It all worked out the way it needed to work out, and I'll be forever grateful for that amazing blessing that happened. So grateful that I heated that message. Yeah. After Christina passed, both my orthopedic family and research family were wonderful, but then I retired just a few months later, the grief was too much, but also we knew we had a work to do. And it started really with her obituary in November.

Then we had information cards in our funeral programs, and we made sure [00:05:00] PMDD was on her death certificate. We knew we had to start talking. So we did. We started with the, school of nursing at University of Missouri and then it's just never stopped. We've had so many opportunities since then in the last four years to speak and to have tables at conferences and at community events.

Just to understand Christina and what she was going through. Mm-hmm. Um. At what point did she start seeking help for some depression and anxiety?

That was right after she graduated from BYU. Okay. I, since something wasn't right that last semester. She had also trialed birth control again right before that last semester, and that's a capstone semester.

There's so much going on. And she was commuting from Provo to Salt Lake, uh, to Marie to work at IMC for clinicals. And she had a lot of other things going on and she just didn't seem happy and that wasn't like her. She was always happy. Then she broke up with a guy who had flown to [00:06:00] see her for a birthday and it treated her all weekend.

And then she broke up with him 'cause he didn't give her a card. And when I said, Christina, he flew in an airplane, he rented a car, he had to get a place to stay. He paid for all your meals and your entertainment. And he broke up with him over a card. And then she hung up on me. And that's not Christina's nature.

She's such a sweet and loving and kind person. But she was upset. We spoke later, I said, are you still using the birth control? And she goes, no, I stopped that. But I think it really threw her off.

I remember back in high school when she tried birth control for cramps, it didn't go well. So she stopped after a month or two.

Christina's not allowed. She was not a screamer. And yet. She just looked unhappy. She kept a lot inside, but that last semester was rough. And so when she came home. She was so concerned about being a graduate nurse and taking her nclex, which she aced it, it was fine. But she was [00:07:00] convinced, that she was a terrible employee, that they were sorry, they hired her, all these negative thoughts and she'd come home from work and she'd tell me these things, and I didn't know where it was coming from because she's my little valedictorian who has only ever excelled in school.

And so how is she now feeling so down on herself? Then she missed a couple days of work after I moved up to Missouri, after I sold the house. She stayed there, and then she called and said that she missed a couple days of work. She just couldn't get outta bed. And I thought, that's not like her. What is going on?

And then she called and said she felt suicidal. And I told her, you gotta go to the hospital. So I flew back down to Texas and then she started getting help. She moved in with some dear friends of ours. The husband's a doctor, and my friend, um, Sandy became like her second mom. What a gift for her to be with them.

'cause then she could talk shop with that doctor every day after work. What they were seeing was anxiety. Then Christina ended up going to her supervisor and was honest. [00:08:00] She shared, I've been dealing with depression and I'm so afraid that you guys don't like me and that you regret hiring me.

And she said, no. On the contrary, Christina, we were just talking about how we wish we could have 10 just like you, if only we could clone you. You are the best graduate nurse we've ever had.

Now that you know about PMDD, I know about PMDD. When you look back on that, do you see that as a classic PMDD experience?

Everything that she went through in those months? Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. You can see it now. It's obvious. And I think that birth control trial in August before the semester started just tipped the balance so that she could no longer feel like herself anymore. It had totally changed her world. To me, it breaks my heart because I was a co-conspirator in that decision to try it again.

And it just makes me sick to think that maybe that was the button pusher. I don't know. It just makes me so [00:09:00] sad to think about it. Yeah.

So then she was probably in her twenties then when she graduated BYU and started this job and mm-hmm. You said that she went 11 years.

11 years trying to get help mm-hmm. For depression and anxiety. Yeah. Okay. Mm-hmm.

Just for our listeners, Christina was living, she and her husband and kids were living in Lincoln, Nebraska in 2021. Well, in 2020. Even before that, probably they were, well, right, they moved there. Probably. I've been trying to think about how old was the baby when they moved there? He probably graduated around 2016, so if I remember right. So they'd been in Lincoln already about five years by the time she passed away.

When they moved to Lincoln, she got really involved in church positions and loved it. She loved serving in church, she loved everything about it. And that also filled her need for social [00:10:00] interaction and planning events kept her moving forward. She would later recall to me that school kept her moving forward and then her work schedule did the same. Church positions did the same.

What the COVID hit it, everything stopped. Oh, yes. Mm-hmm. So now she's just in the house getting into her head more. You know, she just feels like that really caused, major downfall. Yeah. I think that, for me being a stay at home mom, had a negative effect in terms of the negative thoughts and those cycles and patterns.

I've wondered was it something about having kids that made it worse. I can look back in, uh, journals from high school and they don't make sense. I was just reading a little section and I talk about going out with friends and [00:11:00] doing this with this guy and this with another guy.

Mm-hmm. And then literally one or two days later in my journal, I say, why does no one like me, no boys like me? No one wants to be around me. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, what are you talking about? Like, yeah. And now that you know about PMBD, you're looking right at it in your journal, aren't you? Exactly, yes.

When we figured out Christina had PMBD nine months after she arrived at our home, um, she said she also felt like she had it since high school.

But PMBD is a spectrum, so even though it will always be worse than PMS, she didn't live inside of anybody else's body. She didn't know what they were experiencing versus what she was experiencing. And she was so good at hiding how she was feeling inside. But there were times that I was surprised by how upset she got. I don't want anyone because everybody has a different [00:12:00] idea. You know, when we communicate, I could be talking about a poodle and you're envisioning a great dane. Christina was not a rageful person. But I can see a few instances in high school where that would make sense in junior and senior year.

I think that the shift that happens is that you are no longer just taking care of yourself. Yeah. And those things that are moving you forward, they're less obvious. Mm-hmm. Can't just point to oh, I'm getting another semester under my belt, or I'm gonna graduate sophomore year.

I'm finishing volleyball season. Like you mentioned, um, that Christina felt like those things kept her going and moving forward. And I think there's times in our life where that's more difficult to see. And for me, it was becoming and being a stay at home mom when I had my first daughter, I finished working that year as a teacher, but then. Then I would stay at home. But we [00:13:00] were still doing so much for my husband's career and we were moving. 'cause he graduated and we moved, and then I was pregnant again. I feel like it wasn't very evident except in moments with my first two kids, where I remember thinking the moms are outside playing with their little kids.

Oh, I should be doing that too. And I never was that kind of person. Really never noticed it.

But like you're saying it shows up differently.

Well, and her first pregnancy was terrific. There she was working as a thoracic ICU nurse at that point in Murray, Utah. She said that the depression and anxiety went into remission and then she was nursing and she felt great. Then when she got pregnant with her second child, she had perinatal depression, so she had depression while she was expecting, and then she had postpartum depression [00:14:00] and then it just seemed like she never really came out of that.

It just seemed like then the PMDD started we're in its ugly head more and more. I was noticing when she'd come to our house, like at Christmas one time she was annoyed 'cause we're having company. We always had company on Christmas Eve. Later she apologized, we were standing together at the kitchen sink, she said, I'm sorry, I know we always have company on Christmas Eve. , it's just, How often do we come here for Christmas? Why don't you just make it exclusively us? Type of thing.

I took that to heart and we never invited company again for holidays when they were there, because I didn't want to upset. One Thanksgiving we got together, the whole family at a hotel that had tennis courts. 'Cause tennis is big in our family.

But she just seemed so outta sorts. She was not snapping at anyone. But you could tell in her face, she just didn't have that bright light. She wasn't smiling. Everything seemed stressful. After we [00:15:00] had Thanksgiving dinner to this resort place, and then we're at this hotel, I said, tell you what, why don't you guys check out of your room and you go back to our house.

Don't drive all the way back to Lincoln. 'cause that would've been two hours from St. Louis to our house. And five more hours, seven hour drive. That's a lot. So go back to our house. Nobody's there. And you can use the big jutted bathtub and just make yourself at home, relax for a few days. And she took us up on it.

I could sense she had some need, but she wasn't articulating it.

Yeah. And I think that's amazing to have you around. Because you were looking out for her and you could observe that. I think that's something women with PMDD need. They need someone that loves them enough to be able to serve them and to recognize needs that they might not communicate all the time.

Oh, well thank you. Yeah, it just, [00:16:00] when you see that the light is not there, and now we know we can go back and say, oh, that was luteal phase. Oh, it makes sense. By the time all I could do was show her that I had her back. Yeah. And however I can support you. She was also very private. If I tried to ask her questions, she would say, oh, I only talk to my psychiatrist, so, oh, okay.

I felt cut out. So the best I could do was try to perceive her needs. I was always happy to drive to Lincoln to babysit for her if she needed it. Like for overnight ones. And then my husband would take a week off of work. He did this three different times where he would go and just do honey dos for her.

Whatever she wanted. And he would help him move and paint bedrooms and do yard work, whatever needed to be done, repair anything. She would have those special weeks with him. But we sensed that those lists, that those to-do lists were growing and they [00:17:00] were bothering her. So that's why it was worth it, him to take a week off here and there just to go help her out.

That's amazing. That really is.

I want the listeners to get to hear how you found me, because I didn't find you, I only knew Christina's married name because I knew her from church, and I knew her best friend at church in Lincoln. Those of you listening, you can go back and listen. I think it's the first episode, but I will just very briefly say here. When I learned about Christina's passing, I was at the, leader of our women's organization at church. I was at her house and she seemed really sad and I asked her was there anything wrong?

And she said, oh one of our women died and she started talking about Christina and there was just so much feeling, my whole body just, I don't know how to describe it. It was like, it was almost on fire as [00:18:00] she spoke about Christina. This feeling was saying, that's you. That is you. That could be you. She's describing you. It was , a little bit scary for me. And then she said that, this girl, which I don't even know if she said her name at that moment, but this girl that had passed away, had died because she had premenstrual dysphoric disorder. And I didn't even remember all those words.

I remembered PMDD. Mm-hmm. And then there was just like this feeling, not like a voice that told me, but it was this feeling of you have to tell your husband that you think you have this because she's describing you. And, um, I did and I'm so glad I that I listened to that feeling, that voice, that intuition of, I needed to tell my husband .Really it was the Holy Ghost.

It was God just saying, Hey, this is you. You need to [00:19:00] let your husband know. And I was really nervous to tell him, but, I did on the drive home from that family's house. And he was like, that sounds weird. I was like, I know, but I just have to tell you. My husband proceeded to come to my first doctor's appointment with me, so I've been lucky to be supported, but I, I never knew Christina's maiden name, so I wouldn't have really met you.

But how did you find me and how are we able to connect?

Oh, okay. So we don't use her married name, with our foundation name or when we speak of her. Because, well, a couple reasons. One is to give her husband and children privacy because her husband's moved on and he's remarried. And, maybe it's just as well that the world not tried to seek them out because they have their life.

And we very much have our [00:20:00] grandchildren in our life, and they're Christina's children. They're our flesh and blood. We love our sweet little grandchildren, and we see them frequently and have them at our home f frequently. But she was also in the process of going through a divorce at the time that she died.

Mm-hmm. So she had already checked the box that she was going back to her maiden name. So we knew to honor that. And their children told us, so we kind of followed our children's lead 'cause they said Mommy went back to her maiden name. They were fine with it. So we thought, okay, if they're fine with it then we're all fine with that.

But mostly it's for privacy reasons for them.

The girls identified with their maiden name and Marissa had Bone Girl one shirt and Christina had bone girl two shirt. They were these cute baseball girlies with on the back. Yeah.

And how did you find me?

Well it was, uh, last month and I'd heard somebody say, you ought to Google your name from time to time just to see [00:21:00] what comes up. But that triggered something else because I started thinking about something that I wanted to find. I thought I'm gonna find it faster if I Google my name. So that idea had been planted in my head, but really I was looking for something.

I thought, okay, I'm gonna find it easier. Then I was looking for this particular event that we had participated in. Then all of a sudden there's this podcast by you. I listened to it and I thought, oh, be darn. This is the Lincoln, Nebraska version of Christina's story. While Christina was in Missouri at the time you were living in Nebraska, so you knew all of Christina's people there, but she didn't know you.

And so you brought a whole different perspective to the story. Then I found you on Facebook. I sent you a message, a messenger, and said, hi, I'm Christina's mom and I loved your podcast. I absolutely think you are made to do podcasts. Then you and I spoke one [00:22:00] day and we chatted for two hours. It felt like five minutes. It went by so fast. It just seemed like an instant connection. I have to keep telling myself, oh, Christina's never met Heidi. But in some ways I feel like she has. I feel like you two would've been friends had you known each other. I like to think you're friends now in that she's got your back too, and that she's part of this.

Because I just keep getting lots and lots of goosebumps today and I, kind of like to think that she's here with this. Yeah, I love that. And thank you. I hope my podcasts do some good for someone somewhere, always hoping that. Mm-hmm. Um, and i'm remembering that I do mention you on a podcast because I had seen, and that's probably why your name could have even popped up and led you to it.

Mm-hmm. Because later I saw that you were on the association for the I-A-P-M-D International. [00:23:00] Yeah, the International International Go ahead. Okay. The International Association for Pre-Install Disorders. Mm-hmm. Yes. And I had made the connection in my head, but I'd never thought to reach out to you. I just hadn't.

So it was so wonderful that you reached out to me. Hmm.

Okay, so Christina was with you How long before you connected it to pm? DD nine. Months. Nine.

What happened is on October 2nd, 2020, her birthday, she went to the hospital because she was having suicidal thoughts and she was admitted. In the morning she woke up in the behavioral health unit and she told the nurse practitioner that she was feeling so much better. That she had started her period in the night, and she asked if she could go home. Now why wasn't that a light bulb moment right then and there to consider? Wait a minute.

You just said you started your period. That's significant. And yet it was missed by both of [00:24:00] them. In Christina's defense, she graduated from BYU in 2010, and PMDD wouldn't get a diagnostic code and be placed in the DSM five till 2013. And even today in 2026, that's still recent for doctors and nurses. So there are many doctors and nurses in behavioral health units around the country who still haven't heard of PMDD and gynecologists and other doctors.

So awareness is critical. That's how that happened. That she went there and the, the nurse practitioner said, well, I've been reviewing your records and I see all the many prescriptions that you've taken, and I have her list from 2017 to 2021, and it's quite a list. And yet really her list started back in 2011, and I wish we had the whole thing. She said, I think you have treatment resistant depression, and I want you to undergo electroconvulsive therapy and I won't let you go home until you have your first session today.

Well, Christina texted me and told [00:25:00] me what was happening, and then I was begging her not to do it. Not to do the electric convulsive therapy. And I didn't know about how she started her period. I didn't know any of that yet. And so, I said, honey, will you just let me do more research? But doing research for her would've involved her having to open up to me and tell me more.

I don't think that that's what she was thinking of at the moment. She just said, no, I really need to be compliant. She was desperate to be compliant. She trusted the medical system. She was part of it. And so she felt like, if I would just watch the video about electroconvulsive therapy and see how far it's come since the days of one flew over the Cuckoo's Nest, that I would see that it's okay.

'cause she said, mom, it's not Cuckoo's Nest anymore. That's what they're telling me, that it's never gone away. That it's always been there through the decades and it's so much better now. So I watched the video and then I texted her back and said, well, it's made by the manufacturer, but I can see how it would help a lot of [00:26:00] people.

I can really see there's benefits for it, but I don't think this is it for you.

Well, she was determined to undergo this. Then she would call me through the month of October crying, telling me My brain is being fried, my memory is being erased. I'm so exhausted. I can't stop crying. At one point, her little daughter slipped her a little love note saying, you're the best mom. She was a little 5-year-old. And, you know, poor Christina is feeling so much guilt and shame over how she just didn't have any strength in her and all of this. I was trying to assure her, it's okay if this is a day that the kids eat Cheerios and you don't have to keep the house perfect.

The kids aren't walking around with a clipboard, making sure that you're keeping the house perfect and running the laundry, doing the laundry, or vacuuming the house. They just want you. But these pep talks would continue because this electoral compulsive therapy was destroying her. She was convinced of that.

So she wanted to cancel the 10th one and the doctor yelled at her 'cause she [00:27:00] showed up at the appointment and she said, I, I really don't wanna do this. And he insisted that she get up on that table. Then she went to the 11th one and she canceled the 12th one. And then she texted us and asked if she could come home to us.

Well, of course. Her plan was, she would be with us for two and a half weeks just to rest and recover because she felt like her memory had been erased. We feel terrible about this. I mean, obviously she made it to her home safely. She did make it. But when we saw that she was a mere shell of herself and so weak, we realized that we should have gone to get her and we wish we had.

And we asked her, how did you even make it here? And she said, I had to use GPS, which was a stunner because it's not that hard and she's driven it so many times. And I'm picturing the freeway merges in Kansas City and all that. So we were really broken hearted that we didn't even realize the seriousness of all this.

'cause now we're in shock. Because this is the daughter who all her growing up years was singing solos, participating in [00:28:00] plays, doing lots of extracurricular in high school and going to state for various things. Speaking at her high school graduation, she clinked into the Fort Worth Convention Center 'cause she had so many medals around her neck and we could hear the clinking all the way up in the stands.

And then BYU was the same thing all over again with her just being this stellar girl. And all of a sudden she's just a mere shell of herself. Steve and I were in shock. After two and a half weeks she didn't go home to her family. She couldn't, and her symptoms worsened and her husband couldn't take care of her and the kids, that would be impossible. And seeing how serious it was becoming, we just knew we needed to keep her with us.

I'm sure that added a layer complexity for her because she grieved not having her children with her. Her psychiatrist wisely said she needed to FaceTime with them every single day to to maintain her maternal instinct. And then we ensured that she saw them every single month for a weekend.

We were putting [00:29:00] things in place to try to shore her up. After she was with us for about three weeks, she said, mom and dad, I owe you an apology. And we said, well, what for? She goes, well, you've treated me with nothing but unconditional love. And for the last 10 years I thought you were against us.

Wow.

Steve and I must have looked really stunned. I can't imagine what she was looking at as she saw our faces in shock. I said, gosh, Christina, that makes me feel a little defensive because I'm thinking of all the things that we've done with you and for you, given you, you know, all this over the last 10 years and not for one second, have we ever been against you or your marriage or any of it. None of it. And she goes, mom, I know that it doesn't make any sense.

To me now all these little things won't add up and make total sense to us for nine more months. Mm-hmm. She also said, I wanna get something off my chest because [00:30:00] I've held a grudge against you since 2007 and it's 2020.

I said, well, tell me what it is. And she said, well, when I went away to BYU, you called the day before I went to church for the first time and you tried to force me to wear an outfit. After she told me this, I said, can I tell you my perspective? Because I remember that conversation really well.

I said, when you and I shop together all summer for your outfits, you picked out winners. You and your sister have always picked out classics. They never seemed to go outta style. Then we drove you to BYU, the 24 hour drive from Texas to BYU. And I hung up all of the clothes in your closet while you were decorating your adorable dorm room. Then we left and I cried most of the way back to Texas.

Then for the next three days, I cried at every meal and daddy would say, you've gotta stop crying. And I would say, I will, I will. I just need my three days to process. But I knew that this time we were going home to an empty house [00:31:00] because Christina filled our home with life. There was so much music. 'Cause she was always singing or playing the piano. And then there was the life of having friends over. Now we are going home to a quiet home. So I told myself, don't be that mom that calls her right away. Maybe she'll call you. So my promise to myself was, I wouldn't call until Saturday, um, to hear how her week went if she didn't call me first.

She didn't call me first. So I called her and she was having a wonderful time, adored her roommates right off the bat. None of them knew each other. And they ended up staying together all through BYU and then having girls trips and being in each other's weddings in subsequent years. Wow. And so they stayed close like sisters. And it had a wonderful, wonderful week. Then conversation kind of ends. 'cause I have nothing to add 'cause our life is doll and boring in Texas. There's no news to tell her that she doesn't already know 'cause she lived there.

I was trying to think, what can I say, what can I ask to keep the conversation going? Only because I [00:32:00] wanted to hear her voice. 'cause my baby is in Utah, so my heart's in Utah. The first question that came to mind was, oh, what are you gonna wear to church tomorrow? I took it that she was brainstorming and she said, well, I was thinking of this and I knew exactly the outfit. I said, oh, that is adorable. That is great. I said, oh. And then I'm just trying to show her that I'm engaged. Because I'm a thousand miles away. I don't really care. I just wanna hear her voice. So I said, oh, and then there's that cute outfit we got in South Texas on vacation. Well, that's what the grudge was about for seven years. She interpreted that as my trying to force her to wear that other outfit.

When I told her my point of view, she said, mom, I feel so stupid and I am so sorry. She said, I even told my mother-in-law about this. And then I felt even more stupid. 'cause my mother-in-law said, pretend that story was written on a whiteboard, and now we erase it. Because she saw how benign [00:33:00] that conversation really was.

Then I told Christina, isn't that sad that you could have asked me right then and there on the phone, you could have called me right back for clarification, or a week later, but instead, you went from 2017 to October 31st, 2020 before you told me that you had to get something off your chest. All this time there's been this little invisible wedge that I didn't know existed, and it was never intentional. I wish we could have cleared that up.

So she was with us then for nine months before we'd learn about PMDD and then all of these things kind of just fell into place. They made sense. Now we can look back and say, oh, this is explains this, this explains that and she was suffering all that time and we didn't know.

I love from talking with you previously. I love that you say that even when she was in the hospital [00:34:00] She would just bring light and life. Yeah. And she started was it a prayer group? Mm-hmm. At the facility. Okay. Yeah.

There were two hospitals that she would go to. Here in town we have a University of Missouri Hospital. When she would ab report suicide attempts, I would get a call from the police saying, we have Christina. They knew her and she was always respectful and they would say, we have to take her to University of Missouri Hospital.

But when we drove her to the hospital ourselves, there was a particular psychiatrist at another hospital, 45 minutes away in Jefferson City. So we would drive her down there. When she needed to go in December, that's the first time she met him. And that doctor had come highly recommended to us. That's why we sought him out on purpose. So he was waiting for her and he kept her 30 days, that first time. Then after that he would keep her for different lengths of time, sometimes maybe five days, eight days, 20 [00:35:00] days, 12 days. It just varied until I added up to over a hundred days, cumulatively between December 21st and mid-July.

Those were always heartbreaking times for us. We would take her to the hospital and it was COVID, so only Steve or I could go in. We always had tears and saying goodbye to her. But she was always kind and respectful to the staff no matter what mental state she was in at the time. Mostly it was psychosis when we would be driving her down and Steve would ride in the backseat with her and I would be driving the car and we'd have the child locks on.

We'd do everything we could to protect her. It was terrifying for us. We'd never experienced anything like this in our lives. We didn't really have mental health vocabulary. So I started buying books on Amazon and reading books on depression and anxiety, panic attacks, looping thoughts, ruminations, the chatter in the brain, all of these things to try to learn.

But those books [00:36:00] don't identify particular mental health disorders. They are talking about the symptoms. So we still weren't learning about PMDD yet. Then by March we were on a Zoom call 'cause we could only do Zoom calls with her and her doctor once a week, and we would've done it every day.

That, and the doctor knew that. He said that to me one day. He goes, I know you would do this every day if you could. Um, I asked, would it be good when we get her would it be wise for Christina to sleep in our bedroom? We have room. We could put a twin in there. Then we said to Christina, you're 32 years old, we won't ever make you do anything against your wishes so if you don't wanna do that, that's okay. But if it will protect you and make you feel secure, you can sleep in our room. And she said, I shouldn't be alone. So she moved into our room. I don't wanna get ahead of myself, so I'll stop right there. So that was one of the things we did to try to help her along.

And then we'd drive down to the hospital and we would park in the parking lot and we'd call her on the patient line. A lot of [00:37:00] your listeners might not know this, and I would assume that this is standard across the country. It's definitely true for two hospitals that Christina experienced in Missouri, and that is you cannot have your personal cell phone in the behavioral health unit with you. So we'd call and ask for her, or she would answer. We'd say we're in the parking lot. And then she and a nurse would walk down the fourth floor hall, a long hallway to these floor to ceiling windows, and we would wave to her and sign to her that we left her.

And she would wave back and do the same. And then we would go to the ER and we'd drop off a bag. We'd have things like new pajamas, new yoga pants, new slip on shoes, copies of church magazines, um, piano music for her. One thing she was doing is she became more acquainted with the nurses and the patients is she did start doing the prayer group.

At first it started with just a little handful of them down a hall that was not being used. Then it grew so large that was now in the common room. So [00:38:00] everybody was participating in the prayer group when she was there. They would also get out the keyboard so she could play the keyboard for them and sing, or she would play so patients could sing their favorite hymns, things like that. She was a light, and her last day there, one nurse took her to get her things and another nurse said, we love her. We've never felt like she belonged here. And we cried when she cried. When she was feeling well, we would talk about her future because she was one of us, and we could tell that.

Another thing we'd always do is every time she was admitted, and I'll share this in case somebody else will do this for their loved one. A lot of people don't know you can send flowers to the behavioral health unit. Maybe because people are generally there for three days, five days at the most. But you can send flowers as long as you send in a basket or a wood container that has a liner. You can't do glass or ceramic. That's the only stipulation. So we would [00:39:00] order these big arrangements, um, and they were always kept at the front desk by the nurses, at their nurse nurses station.

And we would address the card to the doctors, the nurses, all the staff, and to Christina because we're so grateful for the good care they took of her, how much they clearly loved her. And we also wanted Christina to know how special she was to us, and if we could affirm her in that way, that she is worth every effort. It mattered to our hearts anyway, to do what we possibly could to let her know she mattered, she's important and we're all gonna get through this. That flora shop, they knew her favorite colors and they always did beautiful, beautiful arrangements. And so, you know, we, we did our very best. To try to take care of her. Yeah.

I wanna say Mary Beth, that it, it did make a difference. It made her life just that much better because you did care and you did, oh, you went the extra mile in so many ways with the flowers, with the gifts, with [00:40:00] even finding somewhere that was good for her to be in.

Um, yeah. So I just have to say that. Thank you. Thank you. Because as a mom of a daughter who died by suicide, can you imagine how many, what ifs I have all the time. Um, and it's probably not as bad now as it used to be, but I still think if only we'd done this, if only we'd done that. Why didn't we think of this?

Why didn't I ask more questions and get her to talk more things like that. That's been on my mind lately, is those last few days before she died. How come I didn't tune in? How come I didn't do certain things? And so I'm grateful that you would say that. Thank you. It means a great deal to me, and I don't realize how much I need that affirmation from time to time.

Yeah. When things don't turn out how we want them to, [00:41:00] or how we hope they will, it's, it's easy to not see any of the good. Mm-hmm. In what happened around that topic or around for you, your daughter and her health challenge. But that is what it was. It was a health challenge. And she did everything right.

She tried so hard and I wish she had had support year round. You know, for women with PMDD, I think that is almost like a deal breaker if you're going to be okay if you're gonna live well with PMDD, that's the deal breaker. Do you have the support, throughout your life, on Monday, on Tuesday, on Wednesday, on Thursday, on Friday, on Saturday, and on Sunday, like all of the days.

What I find really interesting is that you might have the support, but when you don't believe that you have the support, then that's means that you don't. It's weird. Hope that's [00:42:00] understandable. But for me, when I believed I didn't have support when I believed there were problems in our marriage and that my husband didn't care about me enough or that I wasn't a good mother, like, I've had all of those things and even feeling like I don't have a purpose, like what am I doing? And I would look at my house and instead of the papers on the floor that hadn't been put away. Instead of thinking, oh, I should put those away, I thought, oh, I'm a terrible person. Mm-hmm. In the last few years, I've been able to shift to I am supported. Because I am loved.

Yes. And to believing that that is enough. Mm-hmm. And if I have to pull back from commitments, it's okay. Like whatever I can give, I have what is needed.

A hundred percent. And that's where, uh, we call PMDD, the great liar and thief. Mm-hmm. Because some of the beliefs that you have are not really yours.

And then we [00:43:00] definitely personify PMDD. We liken it to a foreign hacker that's taking over the brain, and you don't know where this foreign hacker is to stop. So, all those negative thoughts or feeling unsupported, they feel so real at the time, don't they? And even, um, suicidal thoughts, all that you can say in follicular, oh, I'll never do that again, but then PMBD comes along, and that thief is right back in your life, lying to you and stealing your joy, your relationships, destroying everything.

I love what we've talked about so far. To me, it's Christina's story. Mm-hmm. And I feel like that can be like our part one. Mm-hmm. I know that Mary Beth, you lost a daughter and from that I gained awareness and understanding knowledge and my whole life is different. So I [00:44:00] was blessed by your loss, and that's kind of a hard place for me to be in. But I do wanna acknowledge that. And I think Christina she was so wonderful. So let's, well, she was like, you, you know, just a lovely, lovely person who would only ever wanna help anyone and why her. But I think if PMDD can happen to Heidi Bradford, if it could happen to Christina Bone, it can happen to anyone. It does not discriminate. And it is global. It is not just in developed countries. It has nothing to do with your economic status. It destroys lives. It is debilitating. It is so real. So don't let anybody ever tell you that it's not. I'm grateful if Christina's story can make a difference. We knew that there had to be millions just like her. With that we knew we had to increase awareness starting with the [00:45:00] obituary. So we wrote truthfully about our beautiful life.

I mean, just like Christina was, she was a great person. And so it was easy. It was like the words for obituary just flowed out of our hands. And then we included quotes from other people because we figured someday the only two people on earth who will be reading her obituary will be her children. And we wouldn't want them to think that her grandparents just wrote flowery things.

We wanted them to read quotes from other people. So people who responded to us right away after she passed wrote some things that were so true and so, accurately descriptive about her. Yeah. So we included those quotes in the obituary. Yeah. And then at the end we said Christina suffered from premenstrual dysphoric disorder.

And if you'd like more in information, please visit the International Association for Premenstrual Disorders website, iap and v.org because that is a fantastic resource. We [00:46:00] knew we needed to have information cards at the funeral and our funeral programs. We haven't stopped printing them. We did the first printing for that, and now we're to 60,000 cards.

So, um, and that, that the story in itself about how those cards find their way to people. 

Thanks so much for listening to the Living Well with PMDD podcast. To learn more about life coaching with me, visit my website Heidi, H-E-I-D-I, bradford coaching.com. Until next time, keep hoping, keep loving, and remember that you are not alone.