This is part of my autobiography. Just some information that I would like to put up here for people to know about me.
WARNING: The contents in this blog post are not suited to all people. If you get ill thinking/hearing about feminine issues (menstrual), be warned that this might make you ill. If thinking/hearing about genitalia makes you ill, be warned.
This is graphic and true material. This is all from my life.
My name is Rebekah Lynn P. My writer name "nom de plume" is Gracie Mae DeLunac. I have also gone by the name of Margem online, hence my DeviantArt being margem.deviantart.com and my 'artist' Facebook being Margem Okalwa.
I was born January 2, 1987 on an Army base in Kansas, USA. My family then moved up to Minnesota, USA when I was only a month old. I was born with a
Hemangioma. Of course, the doctors said that since I was the first born of my parents that it was merely a "war wound" [injury from the delivery] and that it would go away by the time I was 5. Trust me, it still hasn't gone away {29 years later}. My doctors ended up telling my parents when I was about 11 that it was a Hemangioma and, long story short for this part of the autobiography, that we had to have surgery on it or face the consequences.
But this part of the autobiography is not regarding my life with a Hemangioma. This is regarding my life as a woman with difficulties.
It is known that humans face puberty when they are pre-adolescent. That is usually around ten-fourteen years old. As a female, my puberty hit when I was around ten. My first menses was when I was in fifth grade. It started while I was at school, so I had the "lovely" experience of having to go to the nurses to get feminine napkins. My mother then gave me the speech of why the menstrual system was a good thing. After the first menses in fifth grade, it stopped. The next month's period never came. My doctor said that it was probably just a "false start" to the periods and that it would resume by itself.
Eighth grade rolls around: I did grow as puberty's growth hormones said, but my menses still did not start.
February 2000: I get my yearly illness (cold/flu) but the symptoms are worse than normal. I feel nausea and dizzy, having to literally cling to the hall's wall to walk from my bedroom to the bathroom. I didn't go to school while this happened because my mother said that if I could not walk from my bedroom to the bathroom, 10 feet in the hall, then I wouldn't be able to maneuver my way through the Middle School's expansive maze of hallways with the multiple kids walking to and fro. I agree and so I ended up staying home. My parents had me see multiple doctors and the main thing they said was "rest". One doctor ended up telling my parents that I had a blocked hymen. What that means is that the 'exit' for the menses was unable to let it exit and the menses backed up. We don't know how long it was backed up but maybe up to three years' worth of periods were stopped inside. My doctors set me up for surgery to set it back into motion the way it should.
Easter, Sunday April 23, 2000: After getting the diagnostics regarding why I was getting sick, I slowly got better. I still was unable to go back to school permanently but I was surviving. Easter came and I woke up, knowing something was different. Going into the bathroom, I find that my period has started. Yay, good news! I put on a feminine napkin, prepare for church, and sit on the couch. Five minutes before we are to leave, my stomach is doing flips and I tell my parents that something isn't right. I go back to the bathroom and find out that I have overflowed my pad, after 20 minutes sitting on the couch.
I go to change my pad and my mother finds out how much I am losing. Since I didn't have any of my surgeries yet, she says that maybe I should just stay home to let it work itself out (since it started itself). I say okay and they go to church. I end up going from the toilet to the shower and back multiple times while they are at church, expelling the menstrual blood and cleaning myself off. My parents come to pick me up to bring me to my grandparents' house for Easter lunch and the Easter hunt. Ten minutes after we left the house, we got to my grandparents' house. I was worried about my pad so I went to the bathroom immediately and found it to be overflowed again.
I managed to eat lunch with my family, immediately returning to the restroom when I was done eating and sat on the toilet. My cousin asked if I could join the Easter egg hunt but I shook my head crying because I was feeling so drained from having this constant heavy flow. My grandmother said to my mother that she should take me to the hospital. "She could be bleeding to death, for all we know. You should take her in to get it checked." My mom, pale from the idea that her oldest child could be hemorrhaging. She got me into the car and we drove down to the hospital. The Emergency Room doctor then said that I had developed a pin-hole opening in my hymen and it was relieving the pressure from the blocked menses. "Keep the surgery and go from there. She doesn't seem to be bleeding to death."
We kept the surgery and relieved the amount of menstrual blood that was backed up in my body. I was recovering from that when one day, going to the bathroom, I found myself doubling over in pain. My mother was concerned about me so she took me into the doctor again. This time the doctor said that they would have to do a more invasive surgery to figure out what was happening.
Turns out that the backed up menses (up to three years'/36 months' worth) had not just "sat" in my system but had messed up my body. My gynecologist said that they had to get another doctor in to the surgery to help her figure out what was wrong. My left ovary was on the right, and my right ovary was on the left. They saw my Fallopian tubes and said "that doesn't look right". Removing one, they sliced it open to find that it was filled with puss. Worried for my safety, they removed the other one and also found it to be filled with puss. After they got the whole abdominal area fixed, they took out my appendix. Afterwards they would tell me that if any one was worried, since feminine reproductive issues are taboo, say that I had appendicitis [because that is a lot more "normal" to talk about and a lot more understandable].
The second surgery was like a Cesarean Section surgery in the fact that they went through the abdominal muscles to get to the area. I was hospitalized for over a week trying to get my strength back and learning how to walk again, literally. When I did go home, I ended up spending the rest of my school year at home with tutors and my parents picking up/dropping off my homework for me. I was able to attend the Eighth Grade Year-End "Graduation" Dance, but I stayed off to the side of the cafeteria because I was still sore/exhausted. I remember the dance vaguely but I do recall that they did the Macarena. ^.^
High School came that fall and my doctors kept an eye on me. To regulate my menses, they put me on the patch {which I hated because it made my skin itch!}. It did regulate it but it annoyed me; skin irritations and the like.
After high school, I took medication to regulate the menses and it worked. However, when I was in college, the frequency was more sporatic. I would have one period once every three months, but my doctor was not worried because I was occasionally having a period and was not sexually active (therefore not pregnant). It was during the time frame of 2006-2009 that I was "unofficially" diagnosed with
Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. How to deal with it? Eat healthy and lose weight. {I have been working on that since 2006 and haven't really lost much, though I try...}
Having been off health insurance since 2009, I haven't visited the doctors much.
July 2011: I was at work in an office as a temp agent (data entry / accounting) when I realized that my menses were heavier than normal. I was going to the bathroom every 60-90 minutes to deal with the period and changing pads. I became ill with the flow and ended up leaving work early so I could drive myself to the hospital. The doctors in the Emergency Room said that there wasn't an issue and that I needed to go home to rest. "Take it easy." My mother and grandmother ended up coming to the hospital to get me home, since I didn't feel well enough to drive myself home. The doctors at the ER told me to go visit my regular doctor to deal with it, so I did. She merely told me to "take it easy, eat healthy, and lose weight". Also, she said "just take your medicine and come back in a few months", like she wasn't going to look into why I was having such heavy periods. Again, I tried and tried but nothing has changed and no one could give me a definite answer to why the irregularity was occurring.
Summer 2012: I had started my job as a bus driver that spring and I was struggling to keep my stress level low. I ended up back at the Emergency Room for another issue with my menses. The doctor there ended up literally telling me "Its nothing. Take it easy. I understand that it is a social issue but nothing more." Excuse me, social issue? No, this is a personal life-altering issue. I have to worry about if I am going to bleed through my pad, through my pants, and onto the bus driver's seat. I might not have 'hazardous' agents in my blood like AIDS but it is still a worry to think that I may end up bleeding on the seat, especially with most of my coworkers being males.
Summer 2014: Again, I became sick from having such a heavy period that I went to a doctor in the Mayo Clinic system. She was a sweetheart and understood that we need to deal with this issue. She labeled it for me, finally after 14 years of bulls**t. The word is
Hypermenorrhea: "Hypermenorrhea, also known as
menorrhagia, is a disruption in the normal menstrual flow of girls and women." The 'hyper' part of the word means super. In other words, the menorrhagia is amplified. My doctor actually sent me for tests to figure it out, but still not resolved. I kept my stress level down and the heaviness of the periods let up a bit, so I tried the whole "eat healthy, lose weight" thing again.
Summer 2016: When my husband visited our doctor, I asked her about my issue (changing the overnight pad every 60-120 minutes; sometimes even as often as every 15 minutes). She said that I need to have an
Endometrial Ablation or a
hysterectomy done. She even said to my husband that I need to get on health insurance (even if for a few months) to get it done because overflowing an overnight pad {which most women use for OVERNIGHT of 8-10 hours} in 15-90 minutes is ridiculous.
Where I Am Now:
- My emotional setting is off because of this, even worse when it is super heavy ["dark red blood clots coming out"].
- I cannot consistently work what a normal 29 year old can work because if I move the wrong way, my period overflows. I have overflowed my pad when I have been at work and trust me, it is not fun to try to clean up a line of blood that has snaked its way down the leg towards the shoe because of the overflow. It is also very difficult to explain to my employers why I need to be near a restroom hourly or that I cannot lift things because it might cause an overflow of my pad. [8/20/2016 - I lifted a box that was maybe 40 pounds and I overflowed my pad because of the strain. Luckily I had extras because of the intensity of the period lately.]
- There are many times {over the last 3 years} that I have had to crawl from my bedroom to the bathroom because if I stand up, I will overflow the pad. Standing up in the bathroom causes an overflow but at least I am near the toilet to deal with the mess.
- I cannot go swimming without having to use a tampon and watch the clock so to change hourly (to avoid an overflow).
- I have discussed this with my family and, though I am the oldest grandchild on my mother's side and the oldest child of my parents, I will not be having biological children of my own. My system cannot contain and maintain and support a young life within so even if I wanted to go with an In-Vitro Fertilization treatment/implant, I could not. My mother has had issues understanding this but she has come to realize that not having children of my own is better than risking my life to try to bring some into this world. As of now, we are also not looking to adopt or foster any in the future [personal preference and due to emotional/financial issues].
I am moving back into Minnesota to get health care through the state, as by myself through North Dakota would cost me a good $200 a month (plus co payments, a $100-$500 yearly deductible and up to 20% of the costs after the deductible to a maximum amount). In other words, it would cost me roughly $300/month through those policies in North Dakota to get the same amount of coverage versus $100/month (roughly) in Minnesota. Hopefully, if I am lucky, I can get my surgery [either the endometrial ablation or the hysterectomy] done this winter 2016-2017.
As I said at the beginning, this is something I want to put out there but not for pity. This has been my life and I struggle with it daily. Though many say that this kind of topic is taboo, I want to put it out there as a "Hey! This is real! This should NOT be taboo! Just because a woman can't reproduce doesn't mean that she should be embarrassed from the situation and shy away from knowing who she is, or thinking that she is less of a human because she cannot have children. A woman is not merely the womb.".
I can stand on my own without having to think about having reproduction issues, since I have acknowledged what my situation is. I put it out there for people to realize that stuff like this happens. Do not judge someone based on their negative experiences but take it as a learning experience.
I will close this part of the autobiography with a
thanks to all that read this.
~Rebekah / Gracie
Facebook: www.facebook.com/GracieMaeDeLunac
Blog: GracieMaeDeLunac.blogspot.com
Twitter: twitter.com/Gracie_DeLunac @Gracie_DeLunac
P.S. Yes, I know that this puts my real given name to my pen name but I think that it should be said. If you wish to call me by my real name on Twitter, sure, but I
prefer to use my pen name over my real name {especially on Twitter or my pen name's pages}. ;-)
