Period.

Taboo or Tab-don't

It started when I was fourteen going on fifteen. I had no idea what I was doing and only guessed this was what it was like. I remember watching an awkward video with my teachers earlier in fifth grade but it never prepared me for the pain that was further to come. Shark week, Aunt Flo or just the regular period has many names to curve around the fact that it is a very extremely painful and disgusting thing that happens to nearly half the population yet it is talked about as if it should be kept a secret. When I was young, I used to believe this exact same thing. The period should never be talked about or mentioned but that simply is not true. We gather information through sharing but because the period is discussed as being too taboo to even whisper about, young women find themselves scared and alone trying to hide something that should not be embarrassing.

I first got my period when I was fourteen, the average age. But I was so embarrassed by this part of my body, I never told my own mother until months after it happened. The first few years were quite calm, I barely got cramps and when I did, I would never take painkillers, I just suffered through it for a few hours. Led me to use pads since I was never taught how to use tampons correctly. Using a method I like to call, two pads and a pantyliner, learning this was an adequate solution to holding the gushing blood. I went through middle school a happy young teenager with very little pain. Oh, but I was in for a rude awakening.

Come ninth grade is when the blood had lessened and instead of seven days, it went down to five days but there was a huge consequence to this...pain. My cramps started to become worse, soon I was starting to take pain killers such as Aleve to numb the pain. My back and stomach hurt so bad it was as if someone was scraping a knife from the inside of my abdomen. But it wasn't until tenth grade when the pain was to the extreme. I woke up on a sunny Saturday morning, feeling slight pain in my back and noticing I was bleeding. First, I was relieved as I only had four more days until I could move normally again. But the relief soon ended as the pain soon became worse. Within an hour, I had taken two painkillers and was crying my eyes out, begging my father for help. He was as lost and confused as I was but finally decided to take me to the hospital.

It was around 9 am at this point and I was in after-hours, vomiting in their bathroom. Once I returned, the doctor finally came in, lifted my right leg and claimed I had appendicitis, and told my father and me to go to the emergency room. But even in my state of pain, I knew it was not my appendix but followed his direction anyway. My father drove as quickly to the ER as he could, while I cried in the passenger seat. Once we arrived, I entered begging for help just to make the pain go away. They took me to one of the curtained-off rooms, giving me a shot to stop the vomiting as my father sat in the chair next to me, calling up my mother at work. I never asked him to do this but I think he was as confused as I was. The most wonderful nurse wrapped a warm blanket around my shoulders as I vomited once more. It was about this time when my mother had arrived, asking what the problem was as she tried to comfort me the best she could.

A little less than an hour passed and I was lying in the bed, an IV of water in my arm and my parents sitting beside me. I was still in tremendous pain but was not vomiting anymore. Eventually, a doctor came to explain that they wanted to do an ultrasound on my abdomen to make sure nothing worse was happening to the insides of my reproductive system. Everything had come back clear and because of the water IV they had stuck into me earlier, I had to urinate which is what the doctors were trying to get me to do, so they could check if there were any problems there. After I had successfully peed in a cup, I was starting to feel much better. I had stopped crying hours ago and the pain was subsiding so that I could actually feel hungry. The lovely nurses and doctors had taken out the IV, leaving a bruise, and told me what was going on. Apparently, I had an ovarian cyst in my ovaries that had burst, causing an unfathomable amount of pain. It was 1 pm by the time I was discharged and eating at McDonald's.