Persistent Period After Birth Control - What to Do?

Question
Hello,

I have been experiencing irregularly long periods. I am of normal weight, and have had no STIs or irregular pap smears.

At the end of July I stopped taking birth control after being on TriCyclen for 10 years. My husband and I wanted to try to get pregnant, and my doctor said to wait 2 months to allow the hormones to work out of my system. I finished my last pack on July 22 and my period ended August 1st.
2 weeks later I had bleeding for 2 days, then it stopped. A week after that I had a 3 week long period, it then stopped for 2 weeks, and I have again been bleeding for the past 2 weeks.

Should I be alarmed? What could cause this?

Thanks you,

Sarah

Answer
You definitely need to seek medical attention. You are suffering from dysfunctional uterine bleeding, a common cause of excessive and irregular periods in middle aged women. If your periods are excessively heavy, you will benefit from taking estrogens followed by progesterone in a cycles. Such treatment may be curative in  half of cases. A complete description of DUB is beyond the scope of this forum. Therefore I would advise you to seek your gynecologist as it is important that this problem be taken care of, otherwise it will result in anemia and other conditions like breathlessness etc.