Pre-menstrual Syndrome (PMS) Support Group
Premenstrual Stress Syndrome (PMS) is stress which is a physical symptom prior to the onset of menstruation. PMS is exceedingly common, occurring in 75% of women of reproductive age during their lifetime, characterized by symptoms of mood swings, depression, anxiety and irritability. It is often accompanied by physical symptoms such as bloating and cramping.
WARNING! My descriptions are vivid and not designed to be polite or restrained............ Which in my opinion is also very much the way my periods acted on me and made me act on others......
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
I cramped when I ovulated.........
Not a twinge, not a "pull", a gut wrenching, intestine twisting, suck-your-breath-in kind of cramping that I thought was only reserved for passing blood clots the size of 50 cent pieces. My cramps occasionally made me want to pull my car off the road and ALWAYS reminded me that my demon was done napping and was raising it's psychotic head again........ So it's ironic that I always ended up GRATEFUL when the bleeding and the cramping actually started for real.
So, the timeline.......
I cramped when I ovulated which became the 'red flag' as it were that things were going to start getting ugly. Ugly in the form of a raging fury and an almost homicidal mania that could keep me running like a roller coaster for days (up to 5-6) on end. Then the bloating would start and I'd blow up like a balloon animal for 3-4 days at the end of which I somehow almost always (once I was of legal drinking age) ended up having 4-5 glasses of wine the night before starting to bleed........... Which was both good and bad............
Good because the bleeding explained the psychotic behavior (I couldn't always tell when I was suffering from my own rampaging hormones) and usually lessoned said rampages enough to make me tolerable to be around. Bad because bleeding for me was an Olympic style event. It went on and on and on and on........ Some periods had me bleeding as long as 11 days. Nine was not uncommon and for at least the first 7, I had to change plugs every 45 min. or I'd bleed down my legs.....
The first 3-4 days I wore tampons AND maxi-pads because I bled so heavily nothing could keep up with it. The cramping when I had my period was actually worse then ovulation because it didn't go away. I had those gut wrenching, intestine twisting cramps for at least the first 3-4 days of the most heavy bleeding and sometimes they'd come back again for 2-3 days before my period ended.........
Oh, and there was lower back pain that accompanied EVERYTHING and went from bearable to virtually immobilizing depending on how bad my other symptoms were.
In my mid 30's I started having migraines that coincided with some part of my cycle (I was never able to predict exactly how or when) and although the number of days my symptoms lasted seemed to go down....... the symptoms themselves actually got worse......
My husband said that, in the final analysis, I really only had two good weeks out of every month which meant he was married to the woman he loved only about 6 mo. out of the year.............
I spent almost 30 yrs of my life marking a calendar and keeping "period" underwear in a separate part of my unmentionables drawer because for 2 weeks out of every month I needed heavy, thick, permanently "pink" cotton undies as a last line of defense against ruining my clothes........
So that's the basics ladies......... My "half-life" in a nutshell as-it-were so please feel free to take what you need to, ask about what you might not understand, be relieved if you can, worried if you must and secure in the knowledge that I actually do have more to tell if you need me to and that I AM NOT IN THE LEAST BIT SHY about any of it!
Coming at you with all the love in the world-
the Queen Bitch of the Universe. ;-)
READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!
I cramped when I ovulated.........
Not a twinge, not a "pull", a gut wrenching, intestine twisting, suck-your-breath-in kind of cramping that I thought was only reserved for passing blood clots the size of 50 cent pieces. My cramps occasionally made me want to pull my car off the road and ALWAYS reminded me that my demon was done napping and was raising it's psychotic head again........ So it's ironic that I always ended up GRATEFUL when the bleeding and the cramping actually started for real.
So, the timeline.......
I cramped when I ovulated which became the 'red flag' as it were that things were going to start getting ugly. Ugly in the form of a raging fury and an almost homicidal mania that could keep me running like a roller coaster for days (up to 5-6) on end. Then the bloating would start and I'd blow up like a balloon animal for 3-4 days at the end of which I somehow almost always (once I was of legal drinking age) ended up having 4-5 glasses of wine the night before starting to bleed........... Which was both good and bad............
Good because the bleeding explained the psychotic behavior (I couldn't always tell when I was suffering from my own rampaging hormones) and usually lessoned said rampages enough to make me tolerable to be around. Bad because bleeding for me was an Olympic style event. It went on and on and on and on........ Some periods had me bleeding as long as 11 days. Nine was not uncommon and for at least the first 7, I had to change plugs every 45 min. or I'd bleed down my legs.....
The first 3-4 days I wore tampons AND maxi-pads because I bled so heavily nothing could keep up with it. The cramping when I had my period was actually worse then ovulation because it didn't go away. I had those gut wrenching, intestine twisting cramps for at least the first 3-4 days of the most heavy bleeding and sometimes they'd come back again for 2-3 days before my period ended.........
Oh, and there was lower back pain that accompanied EVERYTHING and went from bearable to virtually immobilizing depending on how bad my other symptoms were.
In my mid 30's I started having migraines that coincided with some part of my cycle (I was never able to predict exactly how or when) and although the number of days my symptoms lasted seemed to go down....... the symptoms themselves actually got worse......
My husband said that, in the final analysis, I really only had two good weeks out of every month which meant he was married to the woman he loved only about 6 mo. out of the year.............
I spent almost 30 yrs of my life marking a calendar and keeping "period" underwear in a separate part of my unmentionables drawer because for 2 weeks out of every month I needed heavy, thick, permanently "pink" cotton undies as a last line of defense against ruining my clothes........
So that's the basics ladies......... My "half-life" in a nutshell as-it-were so please feel free to take what you need to, ask about what you might not understand, be relieved if you can, worried if you must and secure in the knowledge that I actually do have more to tell if you need me to and that I AM NOT IN THE LEAST BIT SHY about any of it!
Coming at you with all the love in the world-
the Queen Bitch of the Universe. ;-)
deleted_user
Wow, alot of what you described is my life!!!
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