#1 - Wow. THAT’s pertinent. :rolleyes: #2 -TUMBLR FFS. Try and keep up here! #3 - They have all the good Justin Bieber pictures, DUH!
See here’s the thing: I agree it’s a bodily function. It happens, but do you obsessively chart if you have heartburn, or a nosebleed, or, I dunno…fart or something? Actually downloading an application for your PHONE to track this, not to mention “OMG my period might be coming - better wear a pad for six days just to be on the safe side!” is like some surreal paranoia to me. It’s part of life…I just roll with it. Sometimes my underwear gets stained - I wash them, NBD.
I’m genuinely surprised by how personally people are taking this. I’m not trying to insult or troll, and I apologize and offer up an olive branch for that. I was merely expressing a difference of opinion. Doctor sez: “Most women don’t know when their last period was.” and I was throwing my support behind that. Whenever I have a gyno exam you have to fill out a form beforehand and one of the questions ALWAYS is “when was your last menstrual cycle” and I was always baffled by that. It just never occurred to me to keep track of something like that.
Can we agree to disagree and quit hi-jacking the thread (especially for the men who have the misfortune to be reading this?)
Yea, sweetie? We’re not. People have just been asking questions and commenting on how…unusual…it is for a grown woman to not understand the purpose of tracking menstrual cycles. Because menstrual cycles might have some different meaning to grown women than other medical cycles.
Umm, sweetie? People have different medical histories, and different ways of dealing with them. I KNOW! CAN YOU BELIEVE IT? IT’S SO WEIRD!
I KNOW! And people are using modern tools to ROLL WITH IT, and…umm…what? Other people might have DIFFERENT MENSTRUAL CYCLES THAN ME??? NO WAY
Girlfriend, before I got spayed, if I didn’t keep track, I ran the risk of bleeding down my fucking legs while standing in front of a class. For those of us with sudden and heavy cycles, keeping track does actually serve a purpose other than grossing you out.
Well, you DID make some posts in this thread that implied that keeping track of one’s menstrual cycle is WEIRD and GROSS, so good for you for recognizing that that reaction is unusual.
Actually, yes, I have. I also charted what I’d been eating and drinking. This helped me figure out which foods I should avoid in order to minimize heartburn.
And when I still menstruated, I’d track my periods, even after I had my tubes tied. I wanted to know when to expect that period. And these records helped my doctor, too, when my cycles started acting all funny.
I’d say that most women DO keep track of their cycles, even if they aren’t having sex, just so that they’ll know when to expect Aunt Flo’s next visit. When I was on the Pill, I didn’t keep track on a calendar, because I just had to look at the little pill dispenser to see how many pills I had left. But I was still keeping track of the periods.
It’s personal because you described the behavior as paranoid, obsessive and gross. Plus you characterized it to the point of redicule. Look at the part I underlined. All most of us said was that we put a dot on a real or virtual calendar so we can wear a pad or keep one nearby. If you don’t want people taking it personally, don’t use insulting terms, please.
Well, first off, I did admit that it was snarkier than I meant it, but I do think it’s relevant. A lot of women get stupid advice from doctors because the medical field has typically been very oriented towards men’s health and women need to be their own advocates. Saying that keeping track of something quite relevant to a woman’s health (they don’t ask LMP for shits and giggles you know) is **gross **is both insulting (which you say you are not trying to be) and something that sounded to me like an adolescent thing to say.
If we want to eliminate some of the stupid things women hear from doctors (and it’s very clear that we’re not far from the eye-rolling, “Oh, typical hysterical woman” days of yore), we need to be aware of what is going on in our own bodies.
So, I see your olive branch and offer one of my own for the 12-year-old snark, but my opinion about keeping track of periods not being just something gross that weird, obsessive people do still stands.
I’m not the least bit bothered by discussions of tracking periods. I would, however, be bothered by bloodstained underwear or sheets because my Vaginal American partner can’t be bothered to track when her period starts. I’d also be bothered by hearing “hmmm, I don’t know when my period is due. I wonder if it’s late?” I’d be so bothered I’d have a heart-attack.
While I’m not disgusted, I am a bit surprised to see how many people track their period. I’ve never done it and I’ve been having one since I was 9 (24 years). I mean, I can understand doing it if you’re trying to get pregnant or on some sort of unreliable birth control but just because seems odd to me. Though I do realize people have different periods, and not everyone’s the same. For me, they last about 5-7 days and I normally have fair warning through very light spotting and always during the day. So I guess if you’re one of the type who have 3 day long bloodsplosion periods then yeah, it might be pertinent XD For me it’s just…meh when it comes, it comes.
I’m often surprised at the number of male docs who don’t seem to be aware that there are many bc methods out there now that stop your periods. I was on Depo for ten years and now have a Mirena IUD. I haven’t had a regular period in years. Once in a while, I spot a little with the Mirena and my body does go through its normal PMS symptoms, so I try to take note when those things are happening for the sole purpose of being able to answer the question next time I’m at a doctor’s office.
Last time I was in, it was for a broken toe. I’m amused by the fact that any medical professional doing intake will always ask LMP even if you’re in there for something completely unrelated, like a broken toe.
So I’m talking to the intake guy. (Granted, dude is not a doctor. But I was hardly his first intake.)
“LMP?” (Looks up)
“Uhhhhhmmmm… Seems like there was some spotting back in June sometime… erm… Mah. I dunno. I have a Mirena IUD.”
“And you can’t remember the last time you had a period?” (In a condescending tone of voice that indicates this is impossibly unlikely and I’m some kind of freak.)
“Nope.”
And he looked at me like “Well, something must be wrong with that.”
No, nothing is wrong. How could a medical professional act like this is the first time he’s ever heard of dysmenorrhea from birth control? Really? Is that such an over-the-top astronomically impossible notion? I pay no attention to anything that comes out of said professional’s mouth if he reacts like he never heard such a thing. I know gay men who are aware of these facts.
Yes, let’s make sure men remain ignorant of knowledge to do w/ the widely varying menstrual experiences women have. That way we’ll ensure they stay bad doctors/husbands/nurses, etc who are stunned when they learn a basic physiological female fact like we have **3 **holes in our nether regions.
Yes, exactly. I’ve had to wash my sheets before (and the mattress pad–PITA!) and been caught at work before, too, because my cycle varies so much. And I don’t want to carry my Divacup with me everywhere I go (though I do have a little cloth drawstring bag to carry it in, when I do take it with me) so I’m not always prepared. Also, when it starts, it’s kind of all over in that moment. If you weren’t sitting on the toilet when it happened, you’ve at the very least stained a pair of underwear. You’ve likely made an externally visible stain (not necessarily permanent, but there until you can wash it) on the outside of your clothes, which is embarrassing, and you may not have a good opportunity to change your clothes right away, say, if you’re at work/school/out shopping… So all in all it makes sense to A) know when you are likely to start and B) be prepared when that time arrives.
When I was on Depo, I remember having to give the explanation every single time, “I’m on Depo, the last period I got was two months after I started the shot…”
Also, I am a charter. But, I can usually tell without looking at the calendar that my period is going to start within a day or two. TMI-I get a blinding headache that is not cured by any known drug exactly 2 days before and my stools get a little looser. My mood also gets wacky, I have no patience and I am cranky as all get out but watching Sara McLachlan and her homeless puppy commercials make me a blubbering idiot.
My mother is currently engaged in a doctor debacle. Because she has yet to be diagnosed with anything concretely, I can’t really say what bad advice she was given. The neurosurgeon thinks her problems are caused by a vascular issue, the vascular dr said the neurosurgeon is an idiot and she only has a herniated disk. She knew about the herniated disk, but the neuro thought he saw something on the scan and wanted her to go see the vascular guy.
So I just had the breast reduction I mentioned earlier in this thread.
There’s no way I could go back to work in two more days. Absolutely no way. I am glad for every minute of these two weeks off, and that’s with feeling much better now than I did yesterday (got home from surgery and pretty much slept for seventeen straight hours).
I have always tracked my period - but it was never a big deal. A little notation in my dayplanner (back in the days of yore) and now I have an app.
The only 2 times my period has surprised me in my adult life were horrifying:
At the airport last Christmas (came 5 days early, thank god, wearing black leggings and a black skirt). Instead of the usual light spotting - torrential downpouring. Nothing on me. Both the bathrooms in that terminal had broken dispensers (but took my money). First store - sold out. Finally paid an outrageous amount for pads (pads! blech!) and managed to get situated right before my flight boarded. It was awful - I was 41 years old and it was like some nightmare highschool menstruation flashback.
At a client site, in Tokyo (breakthrough bleeding, I was on the pill and had apparently missed one/doubled up, too much international travel/time zones). Nothing with me, stained my light brown pants (lightly, thank god, I try to tell myself it wasnt noticeable). Trapped there until 8:00 pm, nothing in the ladies room to assist, finally broke down and asked one of the women there for help (a stranger). Ye gods, it was horribly embarassing. Thank goodness, I still had stuff left in my suitcase from my period 2 weeks before (I was traveling in Asia on business for a month).
Thanks, I’d rather have a ballpark idea when it’s coming. You might think I’m an obsessive freak, I think I’m prepared. Who knows how many other period horror stories I’d have if I weren’t usually ready and expecting it??
Yup, I’ve got the pink-daisy tracker on my Android phone too. Which is SO much nicer than using my planner. I can’t imagine NOT tracking it, honestly, I’m kinda weirded out by the opposite.
The worst advice I was ever given by a doctor was in high school. Everything - EVERYTHING - that was wrong with me, according to him, was because I was hypoglycemic and didn’t eat breakfast. Bad immune system? Eat breakfast. Depression? Breakfast. Migraines? Breakfast. Asthma attacks, insomnia, trouble with my periods, you name it, it was because of low blood sugar in the mornings. And this was our family physician and I was a teenager, I couldn’t go out and get a different doctor for years.
Seriously? You actually think putting a *dot *on a calender once a month, something that takes literally no more than 5 seconds, is obsessively charting your period? That’s like the barest minimum of just recognizing that it exists! If you think such a thing is “gross,” that says more about how you view your own body than anything else.
