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.
no subject
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.