It's time to discuss the un-discussable
Jan. 12th, 2018 09:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
serindeSo I'm getting to That Age; the second roller-coaster of female[1] life, the book-end at the far end of the shelf from the puberty one. I had for some time suspected it was approaching, as my cycle went from a solid 26 days to a more-or-less constant 24 to...all over the map, from 18 to 39 days or anywhere in between. However, this week I was initiated into a new level of hell.
I am going to be super explicit and detailed about my physical experiences here. Because why? Because no one is talking about this stuff. One of the great things about The Rise Of The Internet is that there are vast, accessible, good resources for so many aspects of women's health--beginning menstruation, sexuality, pregnancy, maternity, you name it--but I have yet to see any gold-standard place where women can talk about the Downhill Side. My experience this week was (still is!), by turns or all at once, scary, painful, horrifying, disgusting, and frustrating; and there is nowhere to learn more about it--except via the whisper network. We need information, we need solidarity, we need understanding, and we need it all brought out into the open.
It started Wednesday; long about 11am I developed a bad headache (something I am not at all prone to, except as associated with sinus weasels, which this definitely was not). At first I attributed it to work annoyance[2], but within an hour and a half I felt like I had a skull-cap studded with iron spikes in between my brain and my skin, with a bonus helping of nausea, sensitivity to noise, and extreme discomfort looking at scrolling screens (i.e., reading an email was okay, but paging through social media was very not). OK, new sensations, but I am not ill-read and I perceived this was something in the migraine spectrum; so upon wiser advice I took a cocktail of aspirin + ibuprofen, had a cup of strong tea, and lay down for ten minutes on my office floor with my shawl over my head. This helped considerably, and I was feeling kinda functional for awhile (as long as I didn't read Facebook) (so, double win?), until I went into a meeting at 2pm--not even a bad meeting! it was a friendly, useful meeting!--after which I was in dire pain again. It got better after I was back in my quiet office, but I had the sense to cancel my evening plans and went home, staying in the darkened living room reading Usagi Yojimbo and being tenderly cared for.
Somewhat to my surprise, I woke up still rejoicing in a headache (though not as bad; less pointy, more pressure-y), but my networks informed me that this was not unusual, so I doped up and went in to work. The day proceeded with controllable discomfort--happily, I didn't have any meetings anyways--until 3pm, when I had a video-conference scheduled.
- buckle your seatbelts, kids, it's Carrie time -
Let me pause here to note that my period also started Wednesday morning. My period is (other than the gaps between it) generally as ritualized as a Noh play: I have spotting, then I have 8-10 hours of extreme cramps that require 4 ibuprofen and/or a heating pad to survive, then starting towards the end of that I lose about 50ml of blood &c. over the following half a day, and then it tapers off over the next two days.
On Wednesday, the cramps started about an hour or two after the headache--so I should've been spotting or light flow until sometime that evening. Instead, rather to my surprise, my cup was full (it holds 15ml) at 2:30, when I flushed my buffer. Okay, fine, whatever. I cleaned up, reset, and proceeded unto my vid-conf. Partway through it, I started feeling...not secure in my measures. The women in the audience will know exactly what I mean by that. I ended the call early at 3:45 and did a quick spot-check.
I had flooded: my cup, my undies (in several large spots), my jeans, and part of my chair.
I stripped quicker than a newbie explorer in the Amazon attacked by fire ants and took stock. Blood was literally pouring down my leg. I swabbed, it kept coming. [Repeat for several minutes.] I was trying to stabilize the situation just long enough that I could put on my workout shorts and book down the hall to the toilet. It became clear that this was not going to happen. I sacrificed propriety, took out my cup, and emptied it into my wastebasket (thank fuck for super-heavy bin liners), staunching with the other hand. Reinserted the cup, swabbed every bit of available skin with every remaining swabbable item, and commenced cleanup operations that I will not weary you with.
Reader, I emptied that 15ml cup hourly for the next four hours, until the tide receded.
It's now Friday evening, I'm still bleeding (though lightly), and I still have the lingering headache that flares up and down.
This is, I am told by my older friends, entirely fucking typical. But you don't know that until it's already happened. Two of them had actually gone to the ER when it first happened to them, because why wouldn't you if your ladyparts start sending out seas of blood? How many others do, and get belittled and dismissed for it? Or, suffered some other effect that isn't usual, and needed checking out but didn't because they didn't know what's normal and what's not?
So I'm really feeling the wish to start a website, where my peeps and peeps-of-peeps can post their experiences, for the edification of those who are coming up on their own hormonal roller-coasters. I have this vision of each of us claiming one of the participants of the Dinner Party as our contributor identity (this also makes avatar icons super-easy).
[1] I am not aware of any universal male equivalent; don't talk to me about your shiny red sports-cars, you're doing it to yourselves, deal with it
[2] a Major Incident which the people who should have put on their big-person pants and dealt with were failing to do, and kept dragging me in to play grown-up; something that happens far too often
I am going to be super explicit and detailed about my physical experiences here. Because why? Because no one is talking about this stuff. One of the great things about The Rise Of The Internet is that there are vast, accessible, good resources for so many aspects of women's health--beginning menstruation, sexuality, pregnancy, maternity, you name it--but I have yet to see any gold-standard place where women can talk about the Downhill Side. My experience this week was (still is!), by turns or all at once, scary, painful, horrifying, disgusting, and frustrating; and there is nowhere to learn more about it--except via the whisper network. We need information, we need solidarity, we need understanding, and we need it all brought out into the open.
It started Wednesday; long about 11am I developed a bad headache (something I am not at all prone to, except as associated with sinus weasels, which this definitely was not). At first I attributed it to work annoyance[2], but within an hour and a half I felt like I had a skull-cap studded with iron spikes in between my brain and my skin, with a bonus helping of nausea, sensitivity to noise, and extreme discomfort looking at scrolling screens (i.e., reading an email was okay, but paging through social media was very not). OK, new sensations, but I am not ill-read and I perceived this was something in the migraine spectrum; so upon wiser advice I took a cocktail of aspirin + ibuprofen, had a cup of strong tea, and lay down for ten minutes on my office floor with my shawl over my head. This helped considerably, and I was feeling kinda functional for awhile (as long as I didn't read Facebook) (so, double win?), until I went into a meeting at 2pm--not even a bad meeting! it was a friendly, useful meeting!--after which I was in dire pain again. It got better after I was back in my quiet office, but I had the sense to cancel my evening plans and went home, staying in the darkened living room reading Usagi Yojimbo and being tenderly cared for.
Somewhat to my surprise, I woke up still rejoicing in a headache (though not as bad; less pointy, more pressure-y), but my networks informed me that this was not unusual, so I doped up and went in to work. The day proceeded with controllable discomfort--happily, I didn't have any meetings anyways--until 3pm, when I had a video-conference scheduled.
- buckle your seatbelts, kids, it's Carrie time -
Let me pause here to note that my period also started Wednesday morning. My period is (other than the gaps between it) generally as ritualized as a Noh play: I have spotting, then I have 8-10 hours of extreme cramps that require 4 ibuprofen and/or a heating pad to survive, then starting towards the end of that I lose about 50ml of blood &c. over the following half a day, and then it tapers off over the next two days.
On Wednesday, the cramps started about an hour or two after the headache--so I should've been spotting or light flow until sometime that evening. Instead, rather to my surprise, my cup was full (it holds 15ml) at 2:30, when I flushed my buffer. Okay, fine, whatever. I cleaned up, reset, and proceeded unto my vid-conf. Partway through it, I started feeling...not secure in my measures. The women in the audience will know exactly what I mean by that. I ended the call early at 3:45 and did a quick spot-check.
I had flooded: my cup, my undies (in several large spots), my jeans, and part of my chair.
I stripped quicker than a newbie explorer in the Amazon attacked by fire ants and took stock. Blood was literally pouring down my leg. I swabbed, it kept coming. [Repeat for several minutes.] I was trying to stabilize the situation just long enough that I could put on my workout shorts and book down the hall to the toilet. It became clear that this was not going to happen. I sacrificed propriety, took out my cup, and emptied it into my wastebasket (thank fuck for super-heavy bin liners), staunching with the other hand. Reinserted the cup, swabbed every bit of available skin with every remaining swabbable item, and commenced cleanup operations that I will not weary you with.
Reader, I emptied that 15ml cup hourly for the next four hours, until the tide receded.
It's now Friday evening, I'm still bleeding (though lightly), and I still have the lingering headache that flares up and down.
This is, I am told by my older friends, entirely fucking typical. But you don't know that until it's already happened. Two of them had actually gone to the ER when it first happened to them, because why wouldn't you if your ladyparts start sending out seas of blood? How many others do, and get belittled and dismissed for it? Or, suffered some other effect that isn't usual, and needed checking out but didn't because they didn't know what's normal and what's not?
So I'm really feeling the wish to start a website, where my peeps and peeps-of-peeps can post their experiences, for the edification of those who are coming up on their own hormonal roller-coasters. I have this vision of each of us claiming one of the participants of the Dinner Party as our contributor identity (this also makes avatar icons super-easy).
[1] I am not aware of any universal male equivalent; don't talk to me about your shiny red sports-cars, you're doing it to yourselves, deal with it
[2] a Major Incident which the people who should have put on their big-person pants and dealt with were failing to do, and kept dragging me in to play grown-up; something that happens far too often
