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this is bugging me, though
so i have a lot of life-stuff to catch up on here, but i just saw a post on tumblr saying that march is endometriosis awareness month and reminding people who have periods that debilitating menstrual pain is not normal, and if you experience that you should get checked out.
and that reminded me of a conversation that happened the morning of my surgery -- in a "women's hospital", in the minimally-invasive ob/gyn surgical unit.
a nurse was putting in my iv and talking with me about stuff, as you do, and she asked me about the run up to the surgery/why i was doing it, and (among other things) i said that prolonged heavy bleeding was one of the issues.
so she asked how heavy the bleeding was, and i said, well, i use a menstrual cup so around an ounce every thirty minutes, enough to completely soak a pad within an hour, usually for a few days at a time, and lighter but still heavy bleeding continuing for between seven and seventy days. "enough to soak a pad within an hour" is the language that medical folks use when they are drawing a line for you on whether you need to see a doctor/go to the emergency room, by the way.
and her response was "pfff, that's normal."
so yeah now i'm sitting here thinking about that, and the difference between experiential norms and medical norms and how people wind up normalizing pain as a community.
also my response to her comment was "well, yeah, but it makes it really hard to work".
so NOW i'm thinking about the fact that my strongest justification, in the moment (a moment that happened in a women's hospital, in an ob/gyn surgical unit, in conversation with a medical professional), was not pain or other impact on my health, but rather loss of productivity.
so.
and that reminded me of a conversation that happened the morning of my surgery -- in a "women's hospital", in the minimally-invasive ob/gyn surgical unit.
a nurse was putting in my iv and talking with me about stuff, as you do, and she asked me about the run up to the surgery/why i was doing it, and (among other things) i said that prolonged heavy bleeding was one of the issues.
so she asked how heavy the bleeding was, and i said, well, i use a menstrual cup so around an ounce every thirty minutes, enough to completely soak a pad within an hour, usually for a few days at a time, and lighter but still heavy bleeding continuing for between seven and seventy days. "enough to soak a pad within an hour" is the language that medical folks use when they are drawing a line for you on whether you need to see a doctor/go to the emergency room, by the way.
and her response was "pfff, that's normal."
so yeah now i'm sitting here thinking about that, and the difference between experiential norms and medical norms and how people wind up normalizing pain as a community.
also my response to her comment was "well, yeah, but it makes it really hard to work".
so NOW i'm thinking about the fact that my strongest justification, in the moment (a moment that happened in a women's hospital, in an ob/gyn surgical unit, in conversation with a medical professional), was not pain or other impact on my health, but rather loss of productivity.
so.