Woman Diagnosed with ‘Just Hormones’ for 17th Time This Year

Laura James has tracked her symptoms. She has color-coded spreadsheets. She has apps, logs, and a wearable that can detect shifts in her respiratory rate during ovulation.

And still, after describing a constellation of concerns that included brain fog, rage spikes, and a persistent sense of floating slightly outside her body, she was told it’s probably “just hormones.”

It was her seventeenth such diagnosis this year.
She’s 33.

“I could show up bleeding from my eyeballs and someone would ask if I’m PMSing,” she said. “One time I described dissociation and was told to eat a banana.”

Florence Factsor explains, “Hormones have become the medical world’s emotional trash drawer for women. Anything that doesn’t present cleanly gets dumped there — especially if it’s cyclical, hard to quantify, or inconvenient to test.”

Laura isn’t anti-hormone. She knows they’re real. She just wishes they weren’t a one-word exit strategy from actual care. Her last three providers suggested magnesium, better sleep hygiene, and “positive self-talk.”
Not one ran labs.

She’s since discovered that most women aren’t taught how to understand their cycles, let alone advocate for how those cycles impact mood, cognition, or identity.
“Apparently I’m supposed to accept mood swings, weight changes, chronic pain, apocalyptic cramps, and the urge to punch drywall every 24.6 days as a spiritual journey.”

She’s currently seeing a functional medicine specialist, tracking 17 biomarkers, and reading a book called Hormonal Intelligence, though she suspects the author may be a man.

In the meantime, she’s added yoga — not for the healing, but for the alibi.