I’m sorry to tell you my mom still has breakthrough spotting at 66 and she used Premarin until she found out what it was made of.
Once a month is actually once a year for me. I’m pre-menopausal: I keep waiting for the year to pass without a period so I can be in menopause, but it usually hits at month 10 or 11. Aggravating. I have to wear black pants and never be far from the bathroom during those few days.
I feel your pain, ladies! I started my period when I was 12, and from day one it was awful. Heavy, week long, severe cramps… and it got worse at night. My mom never thought to buy me tampons, she just gave me pads. On the worst days even the mattress-sized pads didn’t really do the job. I would be at school and feel like I was sitting in a puddle. I had to figure out when I could get away to the restroom during the day to change pads. Fortunately I had a couple of sympathetic teachers.
At night it would turn into Niagara Falls. I would wake up in the middle of the night with a massive leak and have to change undies, pajamas, sheets, you name it. One night I was up at 2am cleaning up and I decided to try one of Mom’s tampons just for the heck of it. That was the first time I actually got any sleep while on my period. I never told Mom I was using them, but she had to notice her supply was shrinking faster than she was using them.
Finally at about age 18 I convinced my doctor that I wouldn’t “grow out” of these heavy periods and he put me on the pill. Now I have day-and-a-half long periods with only minor cramping. Thank God… I’ve been on the pill about half my life now, and my doctor says there’s no problem with continuing it. I really don’t want to know what would happen if I went off of it.
Angel of the Lord: I had a copper IUD for a while, and due to it migrating, I don’t have it any longer. (It tried to escape through my cervix.) When I had it, cramps were worse, and so was the bleeding. My menstrual cup held up admirably, considering there were days where I should have called in bleedy and stayed home to bleed to death–er, be miserable on my own. During that time, I also rediscovered the “joys” of pad-induced diaper rash. When you’re bleeding that heavily, backup is mandatory, regardless of method.
These days, it’s not so bad; however, we’re looking into what our options are now with new insurance, and I’m back to my unregulated periods, which have more of a 1-3 month rhythm than an “every month on time” one.
I lost my Keeper! :smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:
First period on pads in years. I hate myself. It’s dirty and smelly and gross I’m sick of emptying my waste basket and rinsing blood off my legs, my butt, my toilet seat…ew! ew! EW! My flow is so damn heavy and liquidy that I’ve got two overnight pads lined up, one in front of the other, to prevent front AND back leaks.
I need a new Keeper, STAT. (Although I think I’m going Moon Cup this time - it occurred to me recently that I needn’t court a latex allergy every month when it’s already a professional hazard. I’ll give silicone a try, instead of rubber.)
Have enough chemo at 24, and you won’t be bothered again! If, however, the cytoxan/vincristine route is a little too much for you, I remember years ago hearing about going somewhere every month and getting cleaned out, so to speak. Not a D&C, but something that got rid of the blood and tissue. Now I definitely could be remembering some goofy Cosmo article I read in the 70s, but does anyone else remember hearing about this?
Had to Google that.
Pregnant mare’s urine
I wonder how many knocked up horses are needed to keep up with the demand?
And, do those horses wear some sort of ‘catch basin’, or is there another Dirty Jobs candidate out there?
I always learn something in these TMI threads.
I had an ablation just over a year ago and I couldn’t be happier with the results.
I am 44 and have been peri-menopausal for 3 years. I was bleeding heavily for 2 weeks of every month. My old gynecologist had me on birth control. The hormones worked, but even though we tried several different brands they were causing me to have 3-4 migraines per week. When I moved, my new doctor suggested an ablation.
Now, I have a couple of days of light spotting every 2-3 months. So far I have only had one period (about 7 months post-procedure) and even that was fairly light.
She was horrified as a lifelong horse lover. Keep in mind to be used for medical grade the urine must be a certain content, sterility, etc. There’s videos you can find showing how the mares are treated and what happens to their unnecessary colts/foals but I don’t think you’ll be glad you saw them.
Happy Days, what were you told as to the ablation’s effectiveness as birth control? I’ve heard conflicting info.
Fortunately, the PMU industry is on the wain, I think.
All my life, my periods have been 2 to 2 and a half days and no cramps, however they’re also about every 23 days. Still, not a bad deal.
I highly recommend OB tampons. They’re the only ones I find comfortable.
StG
Let’s see: I got my first period in the middle of a family reunion when I was 12. It was painful, bloody and the most embarrassing thing that ever happened to me. I always had abundant , painful periods, and spent my life a)missing class or work, b) wearing two pillow-size pads plus a tampon, c) bleeding through clothes, furniture, car seats, bedsheets and mattresses, d) being embarrassed more times than I care to remember e) getting diaper rash from every period.
After a displaced copper IUD turned me into The Fountain of Blood, and I had to use post-partum pads to contain the flood, I had the IUD removed, only to find out that I had severe anemia caused by endometrial hyperplasia (talk about a fun week waiting for the result of the d&c-biopsy). I have been on Yasmin for 3 months, I am loving the very light periods, but seriously hating the morning-sickness type sensation when I start every cycle.
Og, I hate being a woman sometimes!
I hate being a girl about every month. I didnt used to be quite so…copius…but sometime in the last 10-15 years I started to be the Source of Floods. Its horrible. Im just finishing up my cycle. My gyno says no pill for me because of smoking (i know, I need to quit). A friend had ablation, and started heavy bleeding again about 4 months later. She said it was as if she had never had it done. My doc is pressng for an IUD, but perhaps its a holdover from whenever they had issues with those, but I am scared. Another friend had norplant, it went very badly. Depo made me gain a lot of weight.
God it sucks to be a girl sometimes.
Oh god, it’s the worst. I was thinking that I’d go out for lunch for the rest of the week so I’m not using the office bathroom to change, but then I realized I’m not heartless enough to go to McDonalds and bleed all over their toilet seats, so I just have to do a very thorough job cleaning it all up. I’m still nervous I’m going to miss a dot of blood somewhere. I work in a 4 person office, so you gotta treat the bathroom even better than your own at home! Our office cleaner comes in every other week, so I time it so my period is on the week the bathroom garbage is disposed of.
I have found that ibuprofen helps. I know in extreme super dose situations it’ll stop your period totally, but I don’t mean that, just a regular dose. It can take it from double pad territory to one pad territory.
I don’t mind pads, but over the last two or so years my periods have gone a little wonky. And yes, I have talked to my NP over it. It’s like it wants to be unpredictable; timing is okay, but for a couple of months I’ll have awful cramps and the next I won’t have any, and then perhaps another month or two down the line I’ll get awful cramps and, the newest development, clots! Clots big enough I can feel them sliding out! Ewwwww!
She claims it’s probably just that I’m in my mid-30s and things often start changing up then, but I really haven’t missed the cramps I mostly hadn’t had since I was about 13. At least this last month my uterus had mercy on me and gave me a much lighter no cramps period, ending a week and half before my vacation.
I fear what’s going to happen in another week or so, to make up for that.
Wow, I feel so bad for all of you. I dislike having my period too, but even at it’s worst it’s nowhere near as bad as what some of you describe! Mine starts off very heavy (I swap tampons every 2ish hours during the first day) but slows up significantly over the next day and is very light for the next few. Predictable even when off the Pill; every 30-35 days and I always get at least one if not all of a handful of symptoms to warn me (the biggest one being a complete lack of appetite…I’m hungry, but I stop caring what and whether I eat). I tend to get an “bad” one every 3 or 4 months, with more headaches and stronger cramps, but I can take 2-3 regular Advil and get on with my day. I hate how I get more emotional, and I get super clumsy, but again, I can deal with it and it doesn’t really interfere with anything.
I’d hate to have it as bad as some of you! I’m sorry it’s so bad!
I know two women who have had ablation and think they did the right thing. One is healthy and happy. The other has problems that have nothing to do with the ablation.
I used tampons with a pad back-up on heavy days. I much preferred the tampon.
If you have trouble with the plastic of current pads, you can find alternatives such as goddesspads or paysan pads. My skin reacted to the plastic too.
Dealing with my period has been so much better ever since I got a MoonCup over 6 years ago. It has changed my life! No discomfort, no mess, no leaks, only have to change once or twice a day. It’s one of the best inventions ever. I really don’t know how women are still using tampons or pads.
I just stopped in to give sympathies. I thought I had a sorta-bad period, but apparantly I don’t. Thank you for keeping my two days of “They don’t make tampons BIG ENOUGH!” in perspective.
<passes around chocolate ice cream and Aleve>
For me, it’s not the ickyness, though that’s bad enough (Sigh, time for two super overnight pads. Eww, clots. Ugh, blood everywhere).
For me it’s the emotional stuff. PMDD is a special kind of hell I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.
I’ve had heavy bleeding and breakthrough bleeding ever since I had my daughter.
I want to get an ablation, but my doc tells me he’ll have to do it in the OR because he has to remove my Essure and tie my tubes at the same time. Apparently, you can’t do an ablation once you have Essure. I did not know that.