What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma

Foo explores possible links between depression and hormones. In 2019, one year after receiving her diagnosis, Foo is on her way to healing. She feels herself trusting more easily and living with less fear. However, on a trip to Utah, she discovers she has endometriosis. Foo’s first gynecologist tells her that it is a very common condition—one in ten women are affected by it—so it must not have been the result of her PTSD. As there is no cure to endometriosis, she suggests that Foo uses birth control pills to reduce the pain. However, Foo is allergic to the pill, and Mirena exacerbates her depression. She asks for alternatives, but the gynecologist seems thoroughly unmoved, declaring that the pain will soon become unbearable without drugs.

Foo firmly believes that her physical and mental health are inseparable, and she is reluctant to sacrifice one for the other. However, without alternate options, she decides she will return to using the contraceptive NuvaRing in conjunction with the antidepressant Lexapro to offset any increase in depression brought on by hormonal birth control. Foo has taken antidepressants previously, but she does not find them particularly useful in the long run, as they do not treat the trauma—only the symptoms that result from it.