Chronic Rants

I remember the night, around 3am, when my mom taught me how to remove bloodstains.

I got a lot of nosebleeds as a kid. So did most of our family. Luckily, we grow out of them as we get older, and I only get a half dozen or so every year now. Yeah, only.

Some nosebleeds came during the day, and some at night. Usually I woke up fast, since it affected my breathing, but this time I didn’t, and blood got all over my pillowcase. A light sleeper, my mom heard the running water down the hall, and came to investigate. She found me trying to wash the blood out. Instead of doing it for me like she had in the past, she decided it was time I learned how to do it myself, so she showed me what to do. Then she put a clean pillowcase on my pillow and I went back to sleep.

Fun times.

These days, I sometimes still use that skill, but these past two days I’ve used it far too much.

Thanks to PCOS (polycycstic ovary syndrome) my period is always an unpredictable adventure. Sometimes I don’t get it for a year. Then I get it too frequently. Right now I only get it with the help of hormones, but the hormones make me very sick. So the plan my doctor and I created is to only take them for 1 week every three months. That way I’ll bleed (my endometrial lining was building up too much, so unfortunately I can’t just avoid it altogether) but I won’t have to get sick from the hormones all month, every month.

I timed it carefully. I need to allow up to 2 weeks of feeling crappy – 1 week for the hormones and 1 week for my period. I waited until after the pooch left, then took them immediately, because I need my period to be over before I go on a short but much-anticipated trip next weekend with my girlfriends (our first girls’ weekend together!)

It was a good move, because I’m miserable. By the last days of taking the hormones I was fatigued, nauseated, and just feeling lousy, plus moody. Then after 2 days off the hormones, during which the crappy feelings continued, I got my period. And it was heavy. Very heavy. And it still is.

And that’s why in just the past day and a half I have washed bloodstains out of 3 pairs of underwear, 1 pair of pants, and 1 bedsheet. And that’s why it’s noon and I am sitting in my pajamas with no plans or desire to leave the house today. I don’t even want to deal with showering.

It’s a gorgeous day out. The New England fall colors are lovely. Normally I would be outside as much possible. But I’m bloody and crampy and just feeling blah. I’m grumpy  and irritable. I’ve had to wake up in the middle of the night two nights in a row to deal with pads full of blood and various bloodstains. And I curse the biology that makes this happen.

But in a few days this will be over, and I will have 3 blissful months with no period, and only removing my more mundane bloodstains – the ones from random scrapes and cuts, mostly from my own clumsiness.

Won’t that be nice?

Is it just me? Do you have unfortunate bloodstain-removing skills also? Please share in the comments!

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 15th, 2016 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Decisions, Gastrointestinal, Limitations, Pain, Rants, Symptoms, Unpredictable. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.