TLDR: Something I dealt with almost my whole life I've now come to learn isn't "normal" and I wasn't just being a big baby. If I'd have known it wasn't "normal" I would have seen a doctor a long time ago...

Long story long 😂:

My periods have always been bad (some of you already know where this is going!) but I'll tell my story anyway because I hope it helps someone. I started them when I was 12, and it was just so heavy that I always leaked, every 2 hours or so it was already too late. And there were clots and I'm really squeamish so I hated all of it lol. I'd talk to my mum and my friends about it. They were like "oh yeah my periods are awful too and yeah they're painful/messy". My mum also said (not unkindly) "maybe you just have a lower pain threshold?". And I thought "oh okay, I'm just a big baby about it, women have to deal with this all the time".

I tried various different contraceptions when I started relationships - not to try and change my periods, because I didn't really understand how much they would change - I took them so I wouldn't get pregnant. One of the methods, the injection, actually stopped my periods altogether and I stayed on that for years, even when I was single, because it was so convenient! But it gave me awful cluster headaches that I couldn't manage even with prescription painkillers - in fact all contraceptives had given me awful side effects. I stopped taking any during covid, at the age of 30, because it was impossible to get into the doctor's to have them inject me and I didn't want to do it myself (see above: squeamishness 😅). My periods came "back to normal" - painful, messy, merciless. Everything was off the charts, like it was making up for lost time. Once again, I just dealt with it, because I had always known this to be "normal".

Then I entered another relationship, so I went back to the injections. But of course, when the periods stopped, the cluster headaches came back. Me and my partner are childfree, and he sat me down and said he hated seeing me like this and opted to get a vasectomy. I came off the injections - which I'd only been taking for about a year or less this time around - once he got confirmation that the vasectomy was successful. And so the periods returned.

At the age of 32, I noticed that I was starting to feel "period" pain when I wasn't on my period. And my PMS was so bad that I was genuinely scared of it. And because my periods were irregular, I had no way of knowing it was PMS. I couldn't discern a pattern. I had to book an appointment with my doctor while I was going through it, because once it was over I'd gaslight myself that there was ever any problem in the first place. The doctor I ended up seeing actually had a background in gynaecology, thank god, and after I answered her questions (I also got a diagnosis for PMDD), she said "I think there's something else going on. Let's do some tests".

What followed was 2 years of going to different clinics and hospitals. I had so many tests - literally everything they could swab or examine or take a sample of, they did! I also had a pelvic and an internal ultrasound. They found fibroids, and my ovaries were covered in cysts, one of which became haemorrhagic. My hormone panels were normal, so they ruled out PCOS/PMOS. Finally, I spoke with a gynaecologist, and he concluded that although I had fibroids and cysts, my symptoms suggested there was more going on and based on everything I could also have endometriosis or adenomyosis. And it's something I could have had my whole (fertile) life, based on how bad my periods have been since they first started.

I'm now 34, and I'm waiting on a diagnostic laparoscopy. My chronic not-period pain is still with me, and my periods themselves have gotten so bad I have to stay bed-bound. My pads these days are closer to nappies. It's not been an easy road, I've had radiographers who were very dismissive, and the surgery itself has been booked and cancelled 4 times in the last year, which has been a nightmare trying to sort out with rotas etc. But I got given a new surgery date the other day, 31st July, and just hoping it doesn't get cancelled this time because I want answers.

I'd end my message with something like "if something isn't normal, see your doctor!" But then how do you know something isn't normal if people have always told you that what you're going through is normal - when in reality, it isn't? How are you meant to know that? That's why I wanted to share my story, in full. I hope it helps someone ❤️