There Will Be Blood

I have two teenage daughters, and I am a woman at the end of the childbearing bell curve. We spend a lot of time in my house menstruating, talking about menstruating, complaining about menstruation, preparing to menstruate, and recovering from menstruation. All totally normal.

Brace yourself. I am going to talk about menstruation.

I can commiserate with my girls. I see them suffer from cramps, and I remember that misery as I microwave heating pads and dole out fistfuls of ibuprofen to offer them some relief. I buy an endless supply of pads in at least three sizes and tampons and panty liners, none of which are ever on sale at the same time, and all of which are taxed as a luxury item, because there is nothing more luxurious than shoving overpriced chemically enhanced cotton wads in or near a cooch. I scrub panties and the crotches of jeans with hydrogen peroxide or a paste of baking soda and vinegar, making volcanos out of all the stains. I also endure the tears and rudeness and lethargy that one of us is constantly subjecting the rest of us to; misery loves company but hates everyone indiscriminately.

I’ve been doing this period thing for almost ¾ of my life, and while I would love to not deal with it, I don’t like the implications of breaking up with my lady friend. I actually thought that the dreaded M word had begun because I went from my current regular irregularity to a total uterine strike.

My period is all over the calendar. Not literally because what? Gross. I mean it’s not every month and then it’s twice in one month. It’s never a 28-day cycle like in the birth control ads. Sometimes it’s every 40 days, or every 22 days, or every 15 days, which is a real treat if it lasts 8 days or so. And then, out of the blue, it was over 75 days. It wasn’t my normal.

Naturally, I started to freak out. I’m old. This is it. I don’t know the first thing about hormone replacement. I’m going to wither and dry up and then fill out in all the wrong places. I will become invisible, as women of a certain age do, no use to anyone but not ready to shove out in the middle of the ocean on an ice flue.

I turned to the Internet, the source of the best and most accurate information in times of panic and worry.  Here’s what I learned: the definition of menopause is cessation of menstruation for a year in women of a certain age. I had 290 days to go.

Lucky for me, I needed to see my gynecologist for my annual exam, so I didn’t have to go out of my way to discuss it. I could just wait another week and then casually mention it with my feet in the stirrups. Deep down inside, I was convinced I was going to need a D and C, that fun procedure where they dilate you and scrape all the ick off your uterine walls. It’s an old school abortion, well, not wire hanger old school, but pre-medically induced abortion, back when women and their doctors could still make reproductive decisions together.  Naturally, I freaked out some more.

My appointment started out totally normal. Sit and wait. Pee in a cup. Finger stick. Sit and wait some more, only this time in a room filled with pregnant women. Feel old because you think you are in menopause and these women are all still fertile and youthful and you don’t want to be them but you don’t want to be you either.

I followed the nurse to the exam room. She asked me the usual medical history update questions, and then she asked the first day of my last period. I told her 80 days ago. She handed me some pamphlets and told me to disrobe and don my paper drape and vest.

These are the pamphlets:

 

They burned my flesh, just holding them in my hand. I stuffed them in my purse, got undressed, and assumed the position on the table.

My gynecologist seemed a bit surprised to hear I was on period sabbatical, because, get this, I am too young to be in menopause. She wanted to know about my mother and grandmother’s menopause experience, but they were of the generations who had unnecessary hysterectomies because something was wrong with every woman who was no longer having children.  Basically, we had nothing to go on except the 80 days part.

“Are you having menopausal symptoms?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know what they are,” I said. And it’s true. I knew about moodiness, hot flashes, and no periods. Was there more to expect? “I mean, I could have hot flashes, but how do I know? Sometimes I get kind of hot for no reason.”

“Are you waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and have to change your nightclothes?”

“No, nothing like that,” I told her.

“Crying for no reason?” she asked.

“I have two teenage daughters. There is always a reason,” I replied.

She ordered a blood sample to check my hormone levels and then prescribed Progesterone, which would make me have a period if I was still supposed to have one. She instructed me to wait for the lab results before taking the medication, but that I would need to take if for 5 days in order to make my period start. Apparently, if you are supposed to menstruate but you don’t, that can also be a problem, although she didn’t elaborate. I made a mental note to look it up on the Internet when I got home.

“So, I don’t have to have a D and C?” I asked her.

“Where did you get that idea? Of course not,” my doctor said.

“My own head. And the internet. But mostly my imagination,” I replied.

“Stop doing that. Stop looking up things, and stop thinking,” she recommended.

Two days later, the nurse called me to report that my hormone levels are normal. Totally normal. I am what is considered perimenopausal, which is totally normal for a woman of a certain age.

I took the damn pills. After yet another week, I got my period. It was not the massacre I expected. It was totally normal.

Since then, times are back to my 45 day, 30 day, 19 day routine. Perimenopause. I don’t really know what else to look for because I threw away my pamphlets. I imagine most women of a certain age do the same, and it’s totally normal.

Adding Insult to Injury

Yesterday, my twelve year old daughter S became a woman. It is important that you know she gave me permission to write her story. If you see her, don’t congratulate her, commiserate with her, or tell her she is blossoming before your very eyes. Whatever words of wisdom you feel the need to impart, stuff them back inside your gaping maw. Make like you don’t know, or she will never grant me such permission again. Here we go.

Is there ever a good time to get your period? I mean, other than when it’s late, obviously. What about when you are just a kid, minding your own business? You know eventually it is going to happen to you, since everyone has assured you that yes, you too will bleed once a month for approximately half your life.  Until it finally happens, though, you probably don’t think about it too much. You might carry a little bag with pads in your backpack or your purse, hoping that you never need them. Chances are pretty good that when it does start, you will be without your little bag, or your mom. Just like a real grown up.

All year, S was looking forward to the sixth grade field trip to the U.S. Whitewater Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. Due to budget cuts and everyone’s general contempt for middle school aged children, the middle school has no other field trips for sixth grade students, not that this actually counts as a field trip, but more of a parent funded day away from school, one that the entire sixth grade dreamed of for the entire school year.

I dropped her off at school at 6:45 in the morning. She wore old clothes and carried a change of clothes along with a towel in a backpack. She left everything else at home, her hair brush, her spending money, her little bag of pads, because she really didn’t have any room in her bag for any extras. She didn’t even have her phone since the kids had nowhere to leave their belongings except on the seats or in the storage under the bus. I recall offering to chaperone back in the fall, but S thought it would be better if I didn’t, since even she realizes we need to have some time apart.

About three hours later, my phone rang. It wasn’t a number I recognized, so I let it go to voice mail. The phone rang again right away, the same number, which is never a good sign.

“Hello?” I said.

“Waaaaahhhhhh,” my daughter cried loudly.

Oh lord. No mom wants to hear her child cry like that, especially not when said child is on a school trip in another state.

“Calm down, baby. What’s the matter? What happened?”

“I got my period, and it’s all over the place. It’s like someone died down there!” She cried and sobbed and choked a little on her hyperbole.

“It’s ok, sweetie, it is. Aww, I’m sorry this happened on your field trip, but congratulations?” It came out like a question. Emily Post doesn’t have much to offer either under these circumstances. I just went with the first words that came out of my mouth.

“But Mom, I went to the gift shop, and all they have are tamponnnnnnssssssss!” she wailed.

“It’s going to be okay, I promise. Just calm down.” It was kind of hard to concentrate with all that crying. “Here’s what you need to do. Be brave, and go ask a teacher. A female teacher. Tell one of them you just got your period for the first time and does anyone have a pad? I promise you one of them is going to have one. There is no way they can take that many twelve year olds somewhere and not have at least one pad. Do you think you can do that?”

I assumed she could, because she hung up on me.

I waited about five minutes and then called back that mystery number. It was her chaperone. Her male chaperone.  

My poor baby. She just became a woman with someone else’s father.

“Hello?” he said.

“Um, hi, this is S’s mom. She just called me from this number. I wanted to call back and see if everything is under control.”

“Oh, hi, this is so and so’s dad. I’m so glad you called back. Yes, S is fine. The other girls have her in the bathroom and are taking care of her right now. You have nothing to worry about.”

“Well, I really appreciate that, and, um, I’m sorry you had to be the one to be there, for, um, you know, her first time and all.”

“Really, it’s fine. I have daughters.”

I thanked him and said good bye, and spent the rest of my day oscillating between feeling sorry for my little girl, wishing I had been there, crying, and laughing.

After dinner, I drove back to the school to pick her up. I had been dreading it all day, assuming she would burst into tears the minute she saw me. When she got off the bus, she waved and walked over to me, but no tears. I thought, cool, she is saving her melt down for when we get in the car, but again, nothing. She just chattered away about how much fun it was with the rafting and the zip lines and the ropes course and so on and so forth.

“Were you able to find a pad?” I asked hesitantly.

“Let me tell you what happened. I got off the phone with you and walked over to a group of teachers who were sitting doing nothing by the buses. I told them what happened, that I started my period and needed some female products. One of the teachers got out the first aid kit from the bottom of the bus and started digging through it to see if they had anything for me to use.”

I imagined them creating a pad for her out of a wad of gauze and some cloth tape. “Did they have anything?”

“Yes, she found two pads, and she gave them both to me.”

“Well, that was lucky,” I said. “What if some other girl got hers too? Someone wasn’t going to be happy. I’m glad you got them first.”

“I know,” she said. “But listen to this. While she was looking through the first aid kit, a cute little field mouse came out from the bus compartment where they keep the bags. He was so cute, Mom. He was small and brown and so sweet almost like a gerbil but with a small little tail. He kept darting about between the bags. But then one of the teachers said he was hurt. I looked, and it was so sad, he looked like he had been injured, there was blood all over his side.”

“Maybe he got his period?” I asked her. Sometimes I am the only one who thinks I am funny.

She rolled her eyes at me and continued. “The teachers looked at that poor little thing and decided he needed to be put out of his misery, you know, cause he was hurt. And then the science teacher, that one man? He just walked up to the mouse and stomped it to death. He stomped and stomped and stomped until the mouse stopped moving, and he did it all right in front of me, while I got my period. Can you believe that?”

“No, I cannot,” I said.

“It was so sad, Mom. That poor little thing. And you want to know the worst part?”

“There is something worse than crushing a mouse in front of you? Maybe I don’t.”

“On the way home, you want to know what movie they showed us on the bus?”

“No, what was it?”

“Ratatouille.”

“The one about the French rats that cook?” I asked.

“Exactly,” she said. “I had to watch a cartoon movie about mice. Mom, every time I close my eyes, I can still see him stepping on that poor little mouse, crushing it.”

I fed her a lovely dinner of boxed macaroni and cheese, and she watched television afterwards while holding her pet hamster. And that’s when she cried, fat tears raining down on her pet rodent, Sponge Bob blasting in the background.

She might be a woman now, but she is still my baby.

An Insider's View

[Disclaimer: This blog post is the first in a series of three posts that are all about my lady parts and their malfunctioning. If you don't want to know that much about women in general, or me specifically, don't read it. And if you do, thank you for your support.]

I never wanted to be that kind of woman who lived according to her menstrual cycle. You know who I mean, the one who won’t go swimming because it’s that time of the month, the one who has to take a day off of work because her Aunt Flo is visiting, the one who stays in bed and feels generally cursed by Mother Nature. I wanted to be like the girls on the Tampax commercials, with their hair blowing in the breeze as they water ski across the river, the ones executing a perfect dive off a platform or racing a car faster than all of the men. No period was going to slow them down.

Unfortunately, I am not a BASE jumper while on the rag. I am, at forty four, finally having to accept the truth about my lady parts, that they are out to get me. Ever since that first time, thirty two years ago, when my panties blossomed red, I have had a less than happy relationship with my uterus. From cramps in  junior and high school that were strong enough to make sitting in a desk impossible, to the horrible head-crushing migraines that plagued my twenties, to my less than ideal emergency C-sections in my thirties, to now, my reproductive system has had it out for me. And finally, after many years of my putting up a good fight, it’s winning.

Over the past few years, my menstrual cycle, which could never in good faith be described as normal, has taken the unusual and extreme to some new limits. I decided to mention how much worse the frequency and length of my periods is to my gynecologist at my last annual exam. She told me that the next time my periods came closer together than twenty days,  I would need to call the office for an ultrasound appointment. Sure, she tested my hormone levels and all that stuff, to see if I am going through “the change,” but honestly, everything else seemed to be okay, except for the part when I never know when my period is going to show up or how long it will last. My period is the worst house guest ever.

I downloaded this lovely app during the summer which keeps track of your periods for you, the greatest app ever created. Men, I am sure, don’t have to keep track of anything when they go to see a doctor, which is as often as never anyway. Women, on the other hand, are lucky to not be asked the date of their last period when checking out at the grocery store. You always know you need to know, and somehow you never do, which is why I still think my second daughter’s due date was more than a few weeks off. Anyway, with this app, I now know just how irregular my periods are. Sometimes, it’s every twenty five days. And sometimes, it’s fifteen days after the last. Considering it lasts over a week, that means some months I only get a week off. Government employees get more vacation time in a year than I spend not bleeding.

So I made my ultra sound appointment. I went to the doctor and sat in an crowded waiting room filled with everyone from young beautiful first time moms to way older women fighting their aging in a very ungraceful fashion. I just sat there, waiting for my turn, trying to avoid staring at the other patients, convinced that I had uterine fibroids and would need surgery, much like my mother and grandmothers had. What do I know about menopause? No one in my family’s history made it that far with a uterus.

The ultra sound technician called me back to the exam room after a bit of a wait that I didn't mind because of the awesome people watching. She was a very friendly woman, and I was nervous, not so much for the test itself as for what it might show, which meant that I was incapable of using what little filter I had and would tell this woman everything. She told me to step into the adjacent restroom to remove my jeans and underwear and to empty my bladder, after which I was to return to the room and settle myself on the exam table with my feet in the stirrups.

I walked back in the room after the peeing and disrobing part and said, “It’s just like at home.” She gave me a look that said odd, so I had to explain that I meant walking around without pants, you know, when you go home and take your pants and bra off, except that I generally keep my panties on at home, so really, it was nothing like that. I couldn't stop words from spilling out of my mouth.

She laughed politely and dimmed the lights. “Ah, creating the mood,” I said. She put a protective latex cover on the transvaginal ultrasound wand and then lubricated it before inserting it into my vagina. Let me translate that. She put a rubber on that thing, lubed it up real good, and tried to stab my cervix. It was all I could do not to ask her to turn on the vibrator so at least one of us might enjoy it, but was it really necessary for me to transfer my discomfort to this woman who was just doing her job?

She moved the wand around a bit, not unlike you would do with a stick inside a hula hoop, before saying to me, “Have you had an ultrasound here before?”

“Why yes, I am a member of your frequent flyer program,” I said.

“Did we put an IUD in you or something recently?”

“Yeah, about a year ago. It wasn’t all that easy.” Which was an understatement. It took two doctors over four attempts and one hour to do what was supposed to be a simple ten minute IUD insertion. Afterwards, it took two nurses to clean up me and the floor. After six unpleasant months, getting that IUD out was also an ordeal. No wonder she remembered me. I was the one who fainted on the table. Fuck waterboarding. If you want to torture someone, have trouble inserting an IUD.

“I knew your uterus looked familiar!” she said all excitedly.

“No one has ever said that to me before,” I told her.

“I don’t know faces,” she said, “but I never forget a uterus.”

She took all the measurements of my lady parts, data that meant something to her and my doctor, I am sure, before checking all around. She located one ovary, but then said,” I can’t seem to get a good picture of the other one.”

“Oh, that one likes to play hide and seek. No one can find it,” I told her. I actually had a theory that I expelled it several years ago, which is why I only get ovulation pain on the right side every other month.

“No, it’s there; it’s just hiding behind a gas bubble in your intestine. See?” She indicated what looked like a tube sausage on the monitor, which turned out, in fact, to be my bulging intestine. She pressed on it a bit more with the transvaginal wand to make certain I knew what she meant, down to the very core of my being.

“Oh, excuse me,” I said. “I’m gassy, and you can see it. How embarrassing.” I was desperately trying to keep it all in. Talk about control. Thank you, Joseph Pilates.

She removed her wand from my love canal and said,” I don’t see anything to be concerned about. No fibroids or anything. You look good to go. Go tidy up and get your pants back on, and then you can wait for the doctor down the hall.”

My gynecologist reviewed my chart, my ultrasound, and my history with me as well as could be accomplished in under two minutes. “An endometrial ablation is the next step. It’s simple, just five minutes in the office, not even general anesthesia. Most women don’t even get periods anymore after they have it done. And it’s perfect for someone like you, who just bleeds too much and doesn’t want any more children but isn’t really going through menopause yet.”

And so, I agreed. I fought the good fight, but I am ready to not have to spend so much of my time planning around my period anymore. No matter what I try to tell my daughters about how periods are a normal part of life, I accept that I am lying. Periods do suck. And I am ready to not have one anymore, especially if it means I can still have my own natural hormones. Sign me up!