perzephone | Beware! Here There Be Monsters!

I don't talk about my period. Rob has to back me into a corner before I snarl at him, "Look, I'm on the rag & I don't feel like doing anything, let alone moving furniture, seeing your parents or fucking!" When other women commiserate with one another about bloating, cramps and weepiness, I leave the vicinity. If asked about it, I tell other women, "I'm on the Pill - my boobs don't even swell" and they stomp off in anger that I'm not one of the PMS Sisterhood. Even though I've been off the Pill for a little over a year now, for the first half of the year I didn't even have a period. Not one day of blood or cramping or swelling or unusual grumpiness. Which is how it's always gone in the past when I've taken a break from the Pill. I get a normal period when I first stop taking it, and then it's radio silence from my uterus for about six months. The gradually, the spotting begins and I get months and months of non-stop bleeding. Until I go back to better living through modern chemistry.

I've always kind of suspected that I might have PCOS, but I've only had one gynecologist ask me to get an ultrasound or endometrial biopsy before this one I've got now. I don't have the two hallmarks of PCOS, which is darkened skin (what's commonly called the 'pregnancy mask') and hirsutism. I do have everything else, though, including my blood sugar slowly getting out of hand, even though my diet hasn't changed. All my gynecologists have been content to do pelvic exams, PAP smears and medicate my symptoms away. The Pill I've needed to alleviate my symptoms and regulate my periods have gradually gotten stronger & stronger over the years, until I came up against the Lo-Ovral and started losing my hair. I still feel somewhat betrayed by the Pill - it was my friend for so long. I have sang praises of the Pill, defended it to non-believers, and it turned on me when I needed it most.

When I was 5, Terry was pregnant with her first child. I remember Jody & Terry sitting with me, drawing pictures of how a baby was made. When I was about 8, my mother literally threw a book at me called The Teenaged Body Book. It explained everything I needed to know about menstruation and pregnancy and birth control. I learned what was normal and what was not, and I was well-prepared by any standards for the onset of menarche. I never actually talked to my mother about the menstrual mysteries - why should I when the book explained it all so well? A few months after turning 11, I knew it was going to start when I rolled over one morning & my brand-new boobs prevented me from turning over onto my stomach comfortably. Early that summer I woke up covered in blood from my belly-button to my knees. I didn't tell my cousin Penny, I just got up, pulled the sheets off my bed & dragged them into the bathroom to rinse them out & clean myself up. I was presented with a great quandary... tampon or stuff a bunch of toilet paper into my underwear, or tell Penny & have her buy me some pads?

I tried the tampons. Penny had these ones with a hard cardboard applicator. They were huge, bulky, and I struggled to get them positioned correctly. I gave up and used the toilet paper in the underwear until I finally had to break down & ask Penny to get some regular pads. We argued - she didn't want to spend the money, but the tampons hurt me & I was wasting a lot of toilet paper. I hated the pads. They made a diapery rustle when I walked, they smelled funny, and were hard to conceal when I had to change out for gym. Some of the girls had smaller tampons, with smooth plastic applicators (they would throw them at each other... and sometimes at the guys... why I have no idea...). I ended up talking to my aunt and she bought me my supplies of small smooth applicator tampons each month.

At first, I had regular, reliable periods. They hit like clock-work each month, very predictable. By the time I was 12 1/2, it was a crap-shoot. I would go for months without one, and then, at a weird time of the month (and invariably I was wearing something light-colored... if you want to know why I favor black, it hides irregular periods), when I was unable to do anything about it. Having sex was always an adventure because sometimes I'd start bleeding in the middle of it - want to freak out a teenaged boy? Hemorrhage while on top of him. Want to make a teenaged boy puke? Give him his red wings. It was never just a little pink, either - no, it was always a copious flood of ruby red blood. (Hell, sometimes it would freak out a grown man - and the men it didn't freak out freaked me out by getting all fetishy about it... ugh).

I remember one time, in junior high school, going to the restroom & hearing someone crying in the stall next to me. Another girl, a little younger than myself, had started her period. She said putting her tampon in hurt really bad & it didn't stop the bleeding. I asked her if she wanted help or wanted me to go get the school nurse & she asked me to come and look... she had somehow managed to insert her tampon up her ass. I was mortified, but managed to give her directions & helped her clean up a little. I was glad she wasn't someone I had classes with - and we rarely passed in the hallway. Our brief sisterly moment in the girls' restroom did not make us friends.

My aunt never knew I had problems with my period. I just bought tampons with my allowance. I never complained about cramping, swollen boobs, bloating... I always kept it as private as I could. When the irregularity got to a point I couldn't take any more, I found a free clinic on my own. They didn't run any tests - they just gave me pamphlets explaining that sometimes a girl's periods didn't regulate until they got out of puberty. But they did give me a low-dose birth control pill. And condoms. And spermicidal lubricant. All in a plain brown paper bag. It was nice to not have to make a mad dash for the restroom in the middle of band practice, or trying to walk home with blood streaming down my leg because there were no bathrooms between the school & my aunt's house.

When I started reading more books on witchcraft, many of the more feminist books I read always referred to a woman's 'Moon-time' with hushed reverence. They spoke of menstrual blood as being powerful and sacred. They said it was a time of deep power and a woman's energy vibrating to the tides of the earth. For me, all the empowering words did nothing. I always felt slightly disgusted by my genitals during my period. Every time I took my underwear off, there was that flat coppery musky odor. It irritated my skin. It gave me horrible acne. I always felt (and still do) exhausted and worn down. My legs turned to lead, my back ached. I was hungry the entire time, and nothing satisfied. I would be horny, too, and too embarrassed to ask any of my male friends to fuck me, and I didn't want to mess up the sheets by masturbating. Didn't want to take a bath because I didn't want to soak in blood-stained water. For that week out of the month, I was just miserable.

I started grilling gynecologists for a hysterectomy when I was 13. I knew then I didn't want children. When every gynecologist I talked to recoiled in shock I started asking about gender reassignment. My dad always wanted a son. I was perfectly content to be one of the guys. Yes, I loved my womanly curves, my breasts, orgasms... but it was offset by blood. It still is. The process of becoming a man is quite involved, and I knew at 15 or 16 that it was impossible due to money. Who had the cash to help me become a boy just so I could end my periods? And the hysterectomy is usually one of the last steps in the procedure. Some transgendered men still have their uteri... It pisses me off though. Even at 20, the gynecologists all seemed confident that I would 'get over' my childfree-by-choice choice. At 25, at 30, the doctors all thought that I'd be spitting out kids, that somehow being a woman meant that my biological urges to procreate would over-ride my logic and emotional state. Other women act the same way, as if a woman doesn't know her own mind unless her mind is firmly on the mommy-wagon. Even a lot of lesbians. Men always act surprised. "Really? No kids? Wow!" All of them have told me they've never known any women who didn't want kids, until they met me.

It always seems like whenever there's a holiday or special occasion, my period wanted to be in attendance. Birthdays, anniversaries, concerts, Beltanes, Samhains, there was my rag. Whether the event fell in my period's schedule or not. For six months, I tried to get together with a local group that did traditional sweat lodge ceremonies every other month. Menstruating women & pregnant women could not attend. Every other month, there was my period.

Things really didn't change much - all through my teenaged years, into my adulthood. Being on the Pill was the only thing that made it bearable. I loved the stronger birth conrol pills because sometimes I'd have a two-day period... sometimes no period at all. I used to stock-pile pills when I could, so I could avoid the 'spacer' pills & just keep taking them. I've taken breaks, mainly because the Pill has lost effectiveness before. I had one gynecologist send me for an ultrasound & an endometrial biopsy - all that came of that was a diagnosis of a 'prolific uterine lining', which I've finally found the real term for - it's endometrial hyperplasia.

Then I had to make the choice - lighter, freer periods or my hair. Maybe it's my own fault - being vain about my hair. Even though it's pretty much all gray now, I do like my hair. It's always been so thick and lustrous. It only gets frizzy when I bleach it. The thought of it thinning or of going bald, starting with the crown of my head... sometimes I feel like my hair is the only thing I have going for me looks-wise. I'm not a pretty person, but my hair is fantastic. So the Universe decided to take me down a peg - I can't have trouble-free menstruation and good hair, it's either one or the other.

I don't know why I'm so closed about my own natural cycle. I guess menstruation just seems to be out of context to everything except pregnancy. It's your body preparing a bed for a tiny egg that will become a 7 or 8 lb. living thing. It's highly likely that I've never been fertile, which may be why I have absolutely no interest in breeding - my body is in perfect synch with my attitude towards small screaming things. In a polycystic ovary, the follicles that hold the infertile eggs never mature and release the eggs. The follicles swell, fill with fluid... and just sit there, causing excess androgen to be released into the body. Immature follicles don't produce progesterone, so the endometrial lining isn't triggered to slough off, and it grows thicker and thicker. Periods are missed, or are irregular... or persists.

I've been bleeding now for 54 days. At first, it was bearable, thin old blood, more like spotting than anything else. Gradually getting heavier as the month progressed. I thought that maybe once I hit my regular period time, I'd have my period & it would go away. Since the end of July... I wish I was exaggerating. I've examined the blood I'm losing, mainly because I wanted to know, "What the Hel is coming out of me that hurts so fucking bad?!" I placed a cupped hand under my crotch and caught a gout of thick, deep red blood roughly the size of a boiled chicken egg, and almost the same consistency. The pain suddenly made more sense. I'm laying eggs. It's not quite like blood, or small regular menstrual clotting... it's more like tissue (okay, honestly, it looks like canned cranberry sauce, thankfully not the chunky style), with small veins and sticky webbing like the fibrous material between the muscle and skin of a field-dressed deer, or the stringy stuff between the fat & muscle on a low-quality steak. I was okay for a few days there, after I prayed for help, but since the biopsy yesterday the cramps have been bad again.

I described all this to my new gynecologist & he ordered tests and asked me about the endometrial ablation.
The endometrial biopsy was painful, but the hilarity induced by Original Wild Cherry flavored anaesthetic got my endorphins flowing enough during the procedure that I didn't mind too much. At least, not until he held up the probe, which looked like it was about a foot long and resembled a dipstick, & exclaimed, "Look at all the material we got!" A few hours later & it was a different story - no amount of Original Wild Cherry could help me. Of course, since I now have the official PCOS diagnosis, the ablation is not a recommended treatment. The problem isn't just a thick uterine lining, it's deeper at the hormonal level. The standard treatment? The Pill. For me, it means a strong progesterone & estrogen derivative Pill like... Lo Ovral. Which probably means hair loss. So, add Propecia on there. And since my blood sugar is getting wacky, and because a side effect of Metformin is relief of PCOS symptoms, Metformin. And constantly having to deal with stronger & stronger meds to control my period.

Something that complicates all this is that I don't know what the natural age of my female relatives is to go through menopause. My mother died at 44, and I remember there being pads under the bathroom sink. Jody & Terry both had hysterectomies before they were 30. My aunt Liz had a hysterectomy around 45. I don't know about Penny, but she's a second or third cousin. Most of my aunts had hysterectomies between 30 & 40... or were dead before 50. I don't know about the women on my dad's side. So I don't know how many years I'd have to look forward to medicating my periods. Sometimes, with PCOS, menopause is delayed and sometimes it doesn't stop the symptoms.

In all honesty, I feel sorry for my ovaries. They are basically immature ovaries. They never developed past a certain point, kind of like my inner self. Something halted their natural development, and I've grown to loathe them for it. They'll never get better, or develop into full, mature ovaries, and I honestly don't want to keep taking pills to stop the symptoms. I just want them gone. I want someone to kill them off, put them out of their misery so I can live the rest of my life in relative peace. I somehow could accept them more thinking they were just out of synch. I've tried to communicate with that section of my body over the past few nights, ever since I found out what was wrong. Trying to decipher why this condition developed and how I could apply the lesson to the rest of my life. It's hard for me to meditate when I'm crouched over & praying for a quick end, and when I do relax, I fall into the escape of sleep. It's also probably a case of 'too little, too late'. I should have started talking to my ovaries back when I first started having trouble with them.