Ever since my first period, I would get incredible cramps. Incredible in the sense that they kept me from doing everything. Eating food, drinking water, even curling up into my cozy bed with a Kindle while eating chocolate was out of the question. I was squirming in bed, day in and day out, like a worm who has been accidentally trampled by a human and has to die painfully.
School was hard. On my period, it was impossible. I would go blind just by climbing the stairs to the second floor of school with a heavy backpack on my already painful back.
My grandmother used to warn me, “It’s those eggs and chicken you consume! Yeah I get they are nutritious, but non-veg food is a no-no during periods. They cause you to bleed way more!”
I was smart enough not to take her advice. After all, periods are a result of the unfertilised egg now saying goodbye to what it thought would be its home for 9 months, but now has to clear space for the next month’s egg. What comes out as period blood in the follicular phase is only the blood cells, tissues, clots and the egg which was decorating the lining of the uterus. Like shedding fur. You can’t shed an amount of fur you don’t already have. So if I eat eggs or chicken, I was proud to be working as a full-time mythbuster for myself.
But I never really understood the cause of my gut-wrenching cramps. Why are they so bad in some months, and just-leaving-me-alive in others? I had to find out. So I did what any other 13 year old with exclusive access to the internet will do. Google. My. Symptoms.
Turns out, I had dysmenorrhea? That word itself took me three tries to spell correctly.
No, I’m not imagining an increased urge to run to the bathroom on the third day of my period. It’s real. This is how a day on my period looks like:
Step 1. Get an intense cramp in your pelvis, vagina and both legs, all at the same time. The pain must make you nauseous enough to not want to leave the bed to drink water or eat food or even watch Netflix, but strong enough to make you go sit on your toilet bowl for no reason.
Step 2. Strip as fast as you can, and have a hard time pooping.
Step 3. Realise that most of your pain went away 10 minutes after you managed to poop.
Culprit found successfully. It’s the damn poop. It’s building up some sort of pressure and causing the cramps, like a mean roommate who can’t stop playing the drums and you share a really thin wall with them. But you can’t get rid of the roommate, or move to another room / body. It’s a vicious cycle.
I got myself checked for endometriosis thrice from doctors with thyroid tests, ultrasounds and blood tests. I did not have endo. So what did I actually have? But an article on the internet said that women have had to wait 7 years till their endometriosis diagnosis. Is my endometriosis playing hard to get?
Or do I have IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) which makes it worse?
Some articles suggest that it could be the other way round. Not your poop influencing the period pain, but the period influencing the poop and the pain. Prostaglandins. If it’s more than the usual quantity, get on a ride to period town. Your pain is going to be on the max. And you have no way of controlling it. Your body naturally produces prostaglandins. But sometimes, it produces less progesterone, and more of the prostaglandins instead. Not like the good guy bad guy, both of them are actually crucial to our reproductive health.
During our period, prostaglandins can literally overdo their job. If their job was just triggering your uterine wall shedding, well congrats. They have also accidentally triggered your gut muscle contractions. Time to poop.
Diet does matter in regulating prostaglandins according to most research we have today. I have tried them all. Saying no to sugar and fat. Saying yes to leafy veggies, fruits and whole grains. Still no change. My period gives me the same amount of pain it gave me hundreds of cycles ago. My PMS still makes me feel feverish, along with body aches and a surprise of acne.
This leads me to the question: if my period is this painful, what should I expect for pregnancy and childbirth?
Research says, exercise. Research says, don’t stress, or anxiety will push your prostaglandins over the top.
I have tried laying flat on my back. I have tried flipping and laying on my belly. No change in pain or symptoms.
Pro tip, always Google your symptoms, but don’t blame me for the thought afterwards.
I went down the rabbit hole for causes of period cramps and their connection with my bowels. There has to be something. It’s not phantom pain out of thin air. My reproductive system exists, just as much as my digestive system, and they’re not seeing eye to eye at the moment. There’s way less medical research for reproductive systems of women than for men, because apparently people are still afraid to interfere with the childbearing processes of women that they need to bear eternal pain instead?
I’m doing this research while I’m in bed writhing in pain and haven’t been able to do any sort of work for the last 3 days. That, and PMS, when I sort of find problems with everything and just pine to bleed once again. Sorry babe, you were not breathing on me too loudly. It was just right. It was my PMS.
Now I’m thinking. I can’t be the only one in the world going through this level of pain, and this sordid experience of losing my numbered days to the period monster and on the verge of almost losing my career. 50% of the population or more. At least one-tenth of you are having your period. And a lesser or larger number down with the cramps. Right?
Where are you all who are suffering with me, right at this moment of me writing this article? Oh right. I can imagine one of you on the toilet bowl and you haven’t gotten up for 30 minutes now and your legs are numb and your feet have the pins and needles sensation. Another one of you is overdosing on chocolates because you heard somewhere it provides relief from the pain. Another one of you is biting your lip down from the pain while working on the supposed ergonomic chair in the office.
There are millions of you. Millions of us. So why aren’t we talking about it enough? Oh right, the pain. It’s impossible to even breathe through it, how will you talk about it? Specially after all the doctors say it’s nothing, your family says you’re overreacting, and your manager says you’re slacking off with a new excuse?
Almost all of us forget about our period cramps the moment it’s over. The next 25 days would be spent in joy, not in anticipation of the next time it strikes again without our will.
How do you do it? You’re seriously a superhero you couldn’t choose to become.