In which I get all gyno. Readers indifferent to or uncomfortable with talk of cycles, bleeding, and my totally bitchy uterus may skip this entry.

You know what they say: “Never trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn’t die.”

I’ve had a regular cycle since I started bleeding at 12. I was often surprized by my period because if I didn’t look at a calendar there weren’t any symptoms to let me know it was on its way. It was generally cramp-free and three days long. I never got PMS. I could even alter my cycle by will alone – a skill I learned by consciously monitoring the moon’s phases – and which came in handy when I had a big event or a vacation coming up.

Then I turned 30, which was something of a mistake (and something I suggest you younger women avoid at all costs). I was surprized when I started getting PMS, first in the form of feeling really cranky, and later as full-fledged mental instability. Within two years, I had great sympathy for those of my sisters who have been plagued with the psychosis of PMS since their teens. By 35, I had deep and abiding empathy for those women who need a fucking morphine drip when they’re on the rag. And the horror stories I’d heard over the years about cramps so bad they induced tears and hours in the fetal position were no longer just stories to me.

From an effortlessly regular and difficulty-free cycle I now find myself the victim of what my midwife claims is ‘normal ageing’. My cycle is becoming more and more irregular. I bleed like a damned stuck pig for five or six days, and in the past few years have had several episodes of bleed-through that would have killed a younger woman from the shame alone, including: bleeding through my pad, clothes, and coat onto a friend’s couch; suddenly and inexplicably bleeding so heavily at the grocery store that I flooded my pad and could literally feel blood trickling toward my ankles under my skirt as I stood in check-out; and several occasions where I had to leave work or some social event to drive all the way home and change my clothing. It’s like a goddamned faucet sometimes, but I have no way of knowing in advance when it’s going to be like that. (I’ve taken to carrying extra everything when I’m on the rag now, just in case.)

And if all that’s not bad enough, it HURTS, too! I get cramps that would make a grown man beg for a bullet! It absolutely knocks me out most of the time. I spend the interlude exhausted, fuzzy-headed, and I don’t give a shit about anything. The cramps make me curl up and cry, I need several naps a day, I can’t think or remember anything, and to add insult to injury sometimes it screws up my digestion too.

Aren’t hormones fun? I think they’re so fun I almost wish I was a much simpler creature, like a… a… a man, or something.

Last month when I complained about my uterus, my dad said in the comments that I should have it removed. Which seems pretty harsh, considering the bajillion hormones it affects, but lately I almost think it would serve the damn thing right to suddenly find itself in a biohazard container on the way to the incinerator! Hah!

Who’d have the last laugh then, evil uterus!