Periods: A Hate Story
On a spring day when I was in fifth grade, my elementary school split girls and boys up. (There were probably a few kids from each group that didn’t participate, since we all needed parental approval.) Boys went into our math teacher’s classroom, while girls went into our science teacher’s classroom. I assume the boys were shown a video about puberty, since that’s what happened with the girls. The video explained menstruation in very simplistic terms. We were told that periods would start when we were 13–17, would last 3–7 days, and would happen every 28 days. We were warned that we should change a pad any time used the toilet. We were warned that if we used tampons, they would need to be changed every 4–6 hours or we would get sick & die. The description of Toxic Shock Syndrome was the most graphic thing we heard. We were given a postcard that we could fill out for a sampler pack of pads & tampons.
Even with a mom who was open about menstruation & who took me to a supplementary mother-daughter seminar, I was completely flummoxed when my period started the day we got out of school for Christmas break in December 1995. I didn’t know what was going on when it started, and almost recreated a My Girl scene as I ran to my mom. She reminded me of what the classes had taught & told me she would get me extra pads at Walmart or the grocery store. My first period was light and only lasted a couple of days. I was confident I could handle it.
A month later, when my maternal grandfather died and we were snowed in at the home he had shared with my grandmother, my period showed back up. I had no pads with me, and hadn’t expected to be stuck there for a week. I only had two or three pairs of underwear and was unskilled on doing laundry. My period was heavier, and all I could think to do was put toilet paper over my panties. (Do not try that at home.) A few days in, my mom figured out what was going on. It was kind of obvious. My panties were stiff, permanently stained, and smelled awful. The smell of old period blood is something that once you smell, you can never forget, and it permeates. I had trouble not imagining that I smelled like that for weeks. Mom got some pads from my aunt & some underwear from my grandmother to help me until the roads cleared.
That period was also my first long period. It lasted a month. It started back three or four weeks later. I learned that periods could be irregular early on.
Mine continued to be “irregular” for another year, and my energy levels went down significantly. My family doctor sent me to see my first gynecologist before my thirteenth birthday. I started on birth control with the hope that that would regulate it. Birth control worked wonders and within a year or so, my periods seemed normal enough for the gynecologist to take me off the pills.
The irregularities came back and led to another round of birth control. This time my gynecologist picked a different drug, but I took myself off not long after because it had caused my depression to worsen drastically. She refused to try any other birth control after that drug’s effect and after the first one had contributed to my gallbladder being removed.
Things continued to be erratic.
From January 2002 to July 30, 2003, I had no period at all. I know the specific time frame because no one forgets going without a period for 18 months, and few could forget a period that starts while they’re in the recovery room after a major surgery. As I recovered from gastric bypass surgery, I gradually lost my iron stores. For six months, I bled. Unfortunately, the surgery had permanently impaired my ability to absorb iron. Birth control became necessary for survival, so I stayed on it as it leeched calcium from my bones and up to the point where I started developing clots.
For a few years, I accepted that my periods would just be bad & I would have to deal with that. Eventually I found out that progesterone only birth control was actually safer for clot-prone people & that’s my current treatment of choice. I’ve considered others, including the hysterectomy a different gynecologist suggested when I was about 25.
I’ve been through pills, shots and Nuva Rings to help my hormones regulate. I’ve gone through glucose tolerance tests to see if PCOS or diabetes was a cause. I have had multiple pelvic and transvaginal ultrasounds to figure out if there were cysts or tumors issues. I’ve had more thyroid tests than I can count to see if it that’s what makes my periods long and heavy. I have had a biopsy and a D&C of old uterine tissue that didn’t come out during my period. I’ve had breakthrough bleeding. I’ve been the patient that medical students learn about gynecology on — a test-dummy.
I have learned more by reading magazines & talking to relatives about their gynecological issues than I learned in health classes. I learned my grandmother nearly bled to death before her hysterectomy. I learned that my mom had the same issues with birth control causing depression. I learned that I’m unusual in my family because I have painful periods and pre-menstrual cramps.
I learned on my own about layering pads. My mom taught me about combining pads with tampons. When I started using menstrual cups, I learned that on the heaviest days, it’s still best to have a pad as a backup.
I had to learn about the different health issues I was diagnosed with over the years from the Internet — uterine fibroids, PCOS/ovarian cysts, insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, menometrorhaggia, dysfunctional uterine bleeding — and that comorbidity of the issues was not at all unusual. I had to learn about unique treatments for some of the issues, i.e. that cramps and excessive bleeding can be stopped or slowed with orgasms.
I know that I’m not the only person who has been failed by the lack of information about what people really go through with menstruation. From endometriosis to infertility to PMDD to issues transmen endure, people who have issues with are everywhere & have to deal with these issues on their own every single day. It’s not just radio talk show hosts from South Carolina who don’t understand how the reproductive system works. It’s all of us, and it shouldn’t be. This is stuff that we should all be educated on. This is the kind of thing that schools should cover and parents should discuss. We shouldn’t feel ashamed to talk about it.
This is a healthcare issue and a personal hygiene issue, and we deserve better. We should make it easier for individuals with abnormal periods to get medical treatment and supplies for their periods. Inmates with heavy periods shouldn’t have to subside on an average of 11 pads per period. Low-income people shouldn’t have to budget in pads, tampons, or menstrual cups; why can’t EBT or Medicaid cover these items? Why should we bicker over the cost of providing them or providing things like birth control to regulate periods? These are the questions we should be asking. Even ones asking about how much productivity is lost when we don’t provide the information, medication, and supplies that help people to deal with this very real obstacle in their lives. These are the issues we should focus on.
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