Many people are sharing their period stories as part of SubBee’s meme. It’s great and wonderful and awful. Great because the more that we share, the more we understand. When we share enough we inform and break down the taboo surrounding them. Hopefully some of the people who think it’s an indulgent fuss about nothing will also read.
I have ummed and ahhed about writing mine. I don’t have the ‘story’ of others in as far as investigations have never found the cause or the resolution.
Luckily for me, my parents had bought a book to explain puberty to me. I say luckily because I read that before my periods started. Waiting for any other source of information would have been too late. I remember my first one clearly. It was in a chemistry exam in winter. It didn’t start with a whimper, it started with a rush. By the time I had extricated myself to the toilets, there was so much blood. I remember sitting and staring. A little in shock and comparing what I could see with what I had read. My information had been that it is a relatively small amount of blood over the days of the period. This wasn’t a small amount. My super flawed logic led me to decide that I must have lost a whole period’s worth of blood in one go and that there couldn’t be any more to come.
Reader, I was wrong. My journey home that day proved just how wrong.
My periods have always been heavy. Using nighttime towels and super plus tampons to give me up to 3 hours between changes heavy. They have also been accompanied by PMT of a crippling nature. There have been variations and I hoped that the theory that they would improve after having kids was true – it wasn’t for me.
They got worse. They got to the point that I needed to change every hour – not great in a profession with timetabled breaks rather than at need. I found a mooncup a godsend because of the larger capacity but even with that, I could completely fill it to the brim in 3 hours on a bad day.
I’ve tried lots of things to control them. I’ve been on the pill. That gave me predictability for when they would be but caused other problems. I’ve been on tranexamic acid and mefenamic acid which helped a little. I’ve been investigated and scanned for any abnormalities that may cause it without any luck.
Going to the Doctor about it has been difficult. One person’s concept of a heavy period does not match another’s. The mooncup helped with that as I could talk about actual measurable quantities of blood. One question that was always asked was whether there has been change, is it normal for me. Well, although over time it got worse and worse, it was normal for me and change was gradual not sudden. I seem to just be one of those people who has very bad periods.
Bad periods of the type I am describing have been horrendous to live with but I’d still choose them in a bargain if I had the chance to get rid of my PMT. It’s not grumps. It’s not me being tetchy. It’s a hormone storm which takes me from Ok to fearing for my life in a few hours. On bad months, I don’t know if I will make it to the next day. I can be suicidal is the violence of emotion and self-hatred it causes is too much to bear. I’m still here but it feels as though that is by chance. If I was single and not a parent, I think I would be gone. PMT like this is hard to treat. Antidepressants work but I have to take them all of the time rather than for the day and a half that they are needed. CBT has really helped. I have a huge toolkit of strategies to help me. The knowledge that I only have to survive it for about 36 hours and it will be gone is a major one. As is recognising it as an evil symptom that is not the true me. It doesn’t change the violence of the storm but it stops me diving in to it and keeps me alive.
My periods are manageable now in regards to the flow. I have a mirena coil fitted. Unlike others with the coil, they have not disappeared but they have lightened. I now have periods that I can manage and that don’t control my ability to be away from easy access to a bathroom. My period flow now matches people’s descriptions of light periods and that is a wonderful thing. I can still be doubled up with cramps and they can go on for days and days but even that is more manageable because I am not dealing with blood pouring fast out of me.
If I could wish for one more improvement, it would be for my periods to be more predictable. Knowing when the PMT storm was likely would change my life a lot. As you can see from this screenshot, predictability isn’t there at all.
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Thank you so much for joining in. I thought this project would be enlightening, and it is, but it’s also heartbreaking. So many of us in a relatively small community either have or still are experiencing ‘problem’ periods. Problem makes it sound trivial when it really isn’t!
I can only imagine a little bit of what you have gone through, as I have thankfully not had that for too long. I still want to write my story, for I still know how much pain and trouble I had back then…
Thanks for sharing your experience, lovely, and I hope there comes a day when the PMT is not as bad.
Rebel xox
What tracking app are you using? It looks sleek af
The PMT sounds so horrible 😦 but I’m glad you found a BC that works well enough
Thank you for sharing. Off of birth control, I struggle with extremely heavy periods as well. On birth control I struggle with terrible depression. There is no win, and I am currently writing my own experience with different birth controls.