Ignorance About Menstruation Puts Women’s Health at Risk
How cultural stigmas around bleeding have made their way into modern medicine
In 2006, LaToya began having really bad periods. Some as long as 16 days. They were so heavy that she compared the gush to having her water break in labor, and they were accompanied by terrible pelvic pain that the 39-year-old from Brooklyn, New York, described as feeling “like someone had stabbed me with a hot poker in my vagina, my uterus/lower abdominal area, and my rectum.” It hurt to sit down, it hurt to stand up — and forget running or jumping. Bleeding was so constant and irregular that she felt faint all the time and experienced “instances of brain fog and memory loss.” LaToya had to take time off work and feared going out (in case she didn’t have enough sanitary supplies) or, worse, visiting someone else’s house, where she was embarrassed she might ruin their furniture with breakthrough bleeding.
Talking with other women about their periods didn’t help much, since they weren’t having the severity of symptoms that she was.
While LaToya’s gynecologist diagnosed her with a fibroid, the doctor’s only advice other than birth control (which didn’t fit with LaToya’s desire to grow her family) was to “watch and wait,” she says. Yet her symptoms only worsened to the…
