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

[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.)