Squick alert: female trouble
I've never had an easy time with periods. (Yes, I AM leaping right in, thank you.) I got my first period on my 12th birthday. My mom and stepdad had taken me out to dinner. I had cramps so bad I couldn't eat, and I spent the evening lyling on the bench seat at Sizzler, wishing I'd just get it over with and die.
My periods continued to be hideous and unpredictable throughout my teen years. At sixteen, my doctor put me on the Pill to try to get them under control. It worked pretty well for quite a long time, but I still had awful cramps to deal with every month, no matter how much Motrin I gobbled.
I went off the Pill to have my kids. Lots of women told me that my period would even out after I'd had a baby or two. NOT. I went back on the Pill to stop the madness (or at least slow it down).
But the Pill started to have some adverse affects on me. I started getting headaches all the time. I had the sex drive of a neutered geriatric hound dog, which is to say none at all. So I went off the damn things.
Enter peri-menopause hell! My bad periods came back wtih a vengeance. WORSE pain. WORSE bleeding. Cramps starting two days before anything actually happened, then gorking blood like a Takashi Miike film for up to eight days.
I couldn't take it anymore. I went to my doctor, who diagnosed me as anemic, gave me a big old iron shot and a bunch of pills, and referred me back to the OB/GYN who had delivered both of my kids. He listened to me run down my list of symptoms, and handed me a glossy brochure about the joys of...UTERINE ABLATION! (Yes, it IS every bit as repulsive as it sounds. More on that later.)
I'd like to say a word or two about that brochure. It had a picture of a distressed-looking woman on the cover. Printed across her mouth was something along the lines of "The secret millions of women won't even tell their OB/GYNs: painful menstruation." Uh...WTF??? Who wrote that blurb? I'm telling you right now, it wasn't a women. Because just about every woman I know has ZERO problem talking about painful periods. We talk to each other. We have multi-chick bitch sessions. Hell, I've even told random female store clerks:
Clerk: "How are you tonight, ma'am?"
Me: "Awful. I have cramps."
Clerk: "That sucks!" or "Me too!" or "Oh you poor thing!"
If I'll tell the hapless checkout girl at Target, what makes Mr. Dumbass Copywriter think I wouldn't tell my OB/GYN? I mean, this is the guy who's had practically his whole arm in the Holy of Holies. And I'm supposed to be embarrassed to tell him I have cramps? Yeah. Right.
So anyway. Uterine ablation! There are three kinds. Cryoablation, where they freeze the endometrial tissue, laser ablation, where they blast it to smoking ruins, and radio-wave ablation, where they, uh, blast Guns and Roses up your cooch until your womb falls out. Or something like that.
Either way you go, you end up infertile, which is fine by me because I'm old and I HATE being pregnant. (I love the end result, mind you. I just hate the process.) But cryo causes more cramping, and laser takes longer to heal. So it's radio waves for me, on the 17th of this month!
It's outpatient!
I can go back to work in one or two days!
I'll probably never have a period again! And if I do, I'll barely notice it!
FURTHERMORE, my PMS will get better! Yeah, I know that sounds like bullshit. I was very skeptical when I read that claim on various ablation sites. So shameless me, I asked my OB/GYN how that could possibly work. Don't the hormoes that cause PMS come from your ovaries? Yes, he said, but what triggers them to dump out large amounts of hormones--the ones that make you want to kill people with a meat fork--is the buildup of endometrial tissue. Which I will NEVER EVER have again.
Okay, I know it's kind of weird to be so damn gleeful about a medical procedure that's going to leave a part of my body permanently scarred and useless. But at least I'm keeping my bodily mutilation on the INSIDE where no one can see it, unlike Michael Jackson and Liza Minelli.
I am literally counting the days until I go to the hospital.