A Pain in the Junk

[azurelunatic]

I always counted myself lucky among uterus-owners, because my menstrual pain "wasn't bad".

I arrived at that conclusion via a fairly simple rubric.

1: How bad is your untreated menstrual pain? (Mine: immobilized, whimpering.)
2: How long does your menstrual pain last? (Mine: about 48 hours.)
3: How bad is your treated menstrual pain? (Mine: entirely gone.)
4: How much of a pain in the ass is it to get treatment for your menstrual pain? (Mine: barely noticeable, I just have to keep taking ibuprofen to cover me for 48 hours, and ibuprofen is easy for me to get and take.)
5: So for an average period, how badly are you typically actually affected? (Mine: maybe a half an hour of pain before I realized what was going on, then another 20-30 minutes before the ibuprofen kicked in. So only about 12 hours of light agony a year.)

Given that there are many uterus-owners who need heavier substances to knock theirs down to only distractingly painful, and can't always get those things, I felt lucky, and rightfully so.

Comments

[momijizukamori]

100% cosigned (and for me, (1) is usually more like post-workout levels of soreness)

[lilysea]

I think I was at the extreme pain end of the spectrum before I had an endometrial ablation (surgery) to stop my periods.

I had cramps so bad I couldn't walk;
cramps so bad I couldn't stand up;
cramps so bad I couldn't sit up.

This despite every over-the-counter medication I tried.

I later found out[1] that I had retrograde menstruation, where menstrual blood flows backwards up the Fallopian tubes, and that this was why I was in so much agony...

[1] By complete accident: I was getting a tubal ligation surgery while menstruating, and the surgeon noticed.

[watersword]

Oh my goodness I didn't even know that was possible. That's horrifying.

[jenett]

Mine has varied a bit over the years, but the worst of the recent bit pre-IUD:

1) Bad enough to lose a day even with OTC meds to sitting there trying not to move because any moving made things worse, and not able to focus because pain. (It wasn't specific pain, as much as 'my body is so busy dealing with this I can't sort out sensations')

Usually once I could get ahead of it with ibuprofen or naproxen sodium, it got better.

(My cycles were also highly irregular and infrequent at that point - I was running a 65-90 day range - so it wasn't like I could easily take OTC meds a day or two in advance and get them in my system.)

2) I'd have about 24-36 hours of horrible, before it settled down to manageable.

3) Treated, it ranged from 'still can't really function at work or doing anything complex' in a bad month for a day to 'entirely gone'.

4) I had a bunch of doctors just sort of ignore that. (My current one got to that at the end of list of stuff that my body doesn't do right, and said "That one, we can fix, I'm pretty sure." She was right! an IUD helps a lot.)

5) On an average period, I'd lose the first day entirely (sometimes I'd make it to work, sometimes not, sometimes it was on a weekend), and then have 2-3 days where I was definitely less useful than otherwise.

The actual bigger thing for me was issues with flooding: I found them a lot more disruptive than the pain itself, and tended to last longer.

The IUD took a bit of wrangling (to make sure there wasn't some other reason I was having issues that needed treating, and then a round of mispositioning) but it's got me to about a 3 day period, mild cramping on the first day that is totally manageable with an OTC med or two, and a mostly predictable cycle. So much easier to live with.

[azurelunatic]

Oh god the flooding. Yes. Agh. I was so pleased with myself when I stitched together some overnight underwear, so I didn't have to worry so much. And even more pleased when I got to throw them all away.

[cesy]

And this also annoys me, that so many people consider things significantly worse than your experience to be acceptable and normal - that answers to 3/4/5 that don't boil down to "not a big deal" are frequent and yet not considered a problem by many doctors, not the subject of much medical research, etc. Your experience shouldn't be lucky, it should be normal.

[alexseanchai]

...thank fuck for contraception, is all I can say at this point. I basically don't have periods anymore, and it is awesome.

(Possibly inconvenient for when I go to have a kid later, but awesome now.)

[lilysea]

that answers to 3/4/5 that don't boil down to "not a big deal" are frequent and yet not considered a problem by many doctors, not the subject of much medical research, etc. Your experience shouldn't be lucky, it should be normal.

Yes!

My period pain was so bad that sometimes I couldn't

think
concentrate
talk

and

sometimes I was gasp-breathing
sometimes I was almost sobbing/screaming

and I got brushed off by Drs with

"it can't possibly be that bad"

and

"the pain will get better when you have children" (this when I was 15.)

I started menstruating age 12, and I missed so many school classes due to pain!

and it wasn't until I was 21 that a Dr thought to refer me to a gynecologist for endometriosis screening (I didn't have endometriosis, but given my level of pain it would have been appropriate to refer me to a gynecologist much sooner.)

[alatefeline]

Well. That is certainly a thing. And a thing to which I do not have a coherent, compassionate, and considered reaction - just a knee-jerk "gogdam uteruses". I really don't want one but I also don't want to get rid of it quite the way you did, yanno?