The Good, The Bad and The Burning

Warning: This post is mostly about “lady parts” and “lady problems.” If the words vagina, menstruation, bleeding, tampon, pad, and/or urinary tract infection or any variation of the previous words offend you, it would be wise on your part to cease reading the following post.

I had always loved that Renee over at Womanist Musings posted monthly about getting her period. I think these posts were especially important and made an impact on the people who had the opportunity to read them because she combined sarcasm with common sense, that she was a crazy, dangerous menstruating woman–a jab men so very often can’t help themselves but to take. She also assured those who were reading that when a woman menstruates her vagina is not unclean; it is not vulgar, nor is it disgusting; it is merely a bodily function that is completely normal. I am willing to bet that every single woman who has hit puberty has been asked if she was PMSing if she had the audacity to speak her mind. So I had always loved these posts and although I haven’t seen one in quite a few months from her, you should really sift through the archives if you hadn’t yet had a chance to read one.

I had always toyed with the idea of either writing my own monthly period posts on here or guest posting over at Womanist Musings every once in a while with one, but by the time I had remembered that I wanted to do this every month, it was usually by the end of my period and it isn’t necessarily newsworthy to me anymore. Until this month. Oh, this month is interesting in Holly’s world of menstruation.

I woke up with cramps on the morning of October 26th and started bleeding shortly thereafter. While I like to use reusable cotton and fleece pads because they are extremely environmentally-friendly and also a great deal healthier for women than disposables, I didn’t have any readily available because that’s just how it is when you live in an apartment building without a washer, yet there is a dryer available–weird, but anyway, I broke into my backup disposable products. When I go with disposables, I’ll opt for a tampon over a pad, but I never use a tampon the first day of my period because my cramps are so intense that it ends up causing me even more abdominal pain, so I put a pad on and went on my merry way like I do every other month. That night I felt fine so after taking a relaxing bath, I put a tampon in. Again, I went on my merry way. About an hour later and I noticed something was wrong. Very, very unpleasantly wrong. So I take the tampon out, go to the bathroom and the burning! The intense burning sensation that came absolutely out of nowhere that I could not understand for the life of me. It was as if I just decided to pour an entire gallon of hot sauce in there just to see what would happen. That’s the kind of burning we are talking about here. The hottest hot sauce in existence was obviously coursing itself through my vagina and the evil, evil tampon is what caused it! So now we’re two days into my period time and it has only gotten worse. I’ve had my fair share of urinary tract infections but usually they just disappear after a few days of downing as much cranberry juice and Alka Seltzer my body can hold. So my very first ‘Hey everyone, I have my period and it’s completely normal’ post is more of a ‘Hey everyone, I have my period and oh yeah, I feel like I have to pee every 36 seconds!’ Because yeah, we didn’t even get to the urgency part of this yet. The urgency to pee is so strong that by the time I flush the toilet, pull my pants up, walk downstairs and sit down at the computer, I have to turn around and go right back up the steps and into the bathroom again so my bladder can empty about a half a teaspoon of urine and then feel the agonizing burning of the fire of a thousand suns…in my vagina. In fact, when you have a urinary tract infection, there is not much more to your daily routine than constantly running to the bathroom to expel a half teaspoon of urine per every 20 minutes you sit there thinking that there must be more inside of you that needs to come out, but to no avail. When this happens, it seems you can be more efficient if you just took your laptop into the bathroom with you so you don’t have to keep running there while in the middle of doing whatever it is you’re doing, so that is exactly what I have done…and I think I am the most productive while sitting on the toilet, laptop on lap, waiting for the urgency and the burning to subside.