‘That endless bleeding had to stop, now’

Image: Getty Images

After 28 years of menstrual problems, Anna (then 40) was done with it. She had her endometrium removed and immediately underwent sterilization.

Anna (44): “It was my first relationship after my divorce, almost nine years ago. I was 35, my sons, then five and seven, stayed with their father that weekend. In a romantic hotel on the other side of the country I awoke in the arms of my lover, and I immediately felt what time it was. Everything was covered in blood. The pristine white hotel sheets, my hands, and worst of all, the body of the fresh lover next to me, with whom I didn’t feel quite ready to expose myself like that.

Alarm bells

After the initial embarrassment, alarm bells immediately rang. I didn’t have my period for a long time, did I? Suddenly I remembered the cervical cancer screening program I had participated in months earlier, but never got a result from. The next day I called the doctor to be sure.

The assistant was silent for a moment when she heard my name. “We’ve been trying to reach you for ages,” she said. “I’ll put you through to the doctor right away.” I turned out to have a Pap 3b result. Nothing to panic about, the doctor calmed down, but a reason for a referral to the gynaecologist. A trajectory of ultrasounds, biopsies and a loop excision – in which the gynecologist removed a piece of my cervix under local anaesthetic – followed. Then I was clean. Oh, and single again by the way – although fortunately the two had little to do with each other. One thing I knew for sure: the endless bleeding had to stop, now.

off the stocking

On the first day of high school, I didn’t feel well. Headache, stomachache, overall miserable. A virus, my mother thought. Until I pulled down my underpants on the toilet and the cause of my malaise was immediately clear. We celebrated with a bottle of Loulou from Cacharel, I got a pack of sanitary pads that I would recognize as a maternity pad sixteen years later, and that was it.

I had some heavy bleeding, so when I was thirteen I experimented with Primolut, a hormone treatment that was supposed to reset my cycle, through my doctor, and then, after another three years of muddling through, I started on a pill that could keep at least three women infertile at the same time. : Diane 35. Great by-catch, I thought, because I just had my first date.

It didn’t make me a nicer teenager. The pill made me fatter and depressed and I still lay felled on the couch two days a month, single-handedly running the tampon and sanitary napkin manufacturers for at least half of the month. The doctor insisted there was nothing to be done. And so I messed around for years.

Options

Pregnancies and long breastfeeding periods followed. And then after about five years – barring a short period between the children – my cycle started again. Every three weeks, for two whole weeks. It was regular, so I was still within ‘normal’, the gynecologist judged. He placed a hormonal IUD. Primarily for contraception, but also to prevent excessive blood loss. Result: I didn’t stop bleeding at all. Then nothing, I decided. My marriage was on the rocks, any new partner would have to use condoms anyway. And so that Sunday morning I ended up in a hotel bed covered in blood.

When the gynecologist hung out the flag after all the procedures because of my bad smear, I didn’t really understand why. No early stage of cervical cancer was reason enough for at least a bottle of champagne; too many women still get bad news. But what next? Did I have to sit out this massacre, on average about two hundred days a year, for at least another fifteen years until my transition? The gynecologist gave me a glassy look and said: ‘If you don’t want hormonal contraception, hysterectomy is really the only other option.’

Read also

Everything you need to know about swallowing the pill >

Every three weeks again

Meanwhile, another phenomenon emerged: PMS. Something that every woman suffers from to a greater or lesser extent, but in the years without contraception it grew to monstrous proportions for me. Over time I could recognize a fixed pattern in it. My life tossed from himmelhoch jauchzend in the last days of my period, through a few more moderate days, to irritability, insecurity and hot temper in the week after my ovulation. I had to be bipolar, there was no other way, I thought during those periods. Until the period broke and life went back to normal. After which the whole circus repeated itself. Every three weeks.

My kids, boys, of course, figured it out before I did. “Not for any reason, Mom, but maybe you’re on your period?” they often asked in unison. My eldest son once hugged me closely. He wrapped his arms around my waist, pressed himself against me, and as he murmured, “Ooo, dear mama,” the blood ran to the backs of my knees.

NovaSure Treatment

So, back to the gynecologist – this time a woman. She scrolled through my file, listened to my story and said, “But honey, there’s a very good solution for that.” Provided I knew for sure that I didn’t want any more children, because it was irreversible and I knew a lot about which Prince Charming I would run into? Three months later, I was on the operating table for a NovaSure treatment, in which the doctor burned away my endometrium through a net that unfolds against the uterine wall. That would make the chance of implantation very small, but contraception was still necessary. So I immediately decided to sterilize.

For a moment it felt like betrayal. I knowingly destroyed the organ that gave me the greatest happiness of my life. For what my womb was meant for, carrying a child, it did excellently. Getting pregnant, being pregnant, giving birth: smooth sailing. So how sick could this organ be? All these thoughts flashed through my head. Until I had my period the first time after the procedure and could do away with the whole party with a panty liner. Overjoyed, I proclaimed the glad tidings to friends. Why is this not standard procedure for every woman who no longer wishes to have children?

Bleeding

A large proportion of women never have their period again after such an operation. I didn’t belong there. And when after two years the bleeding was still continuous, but only dark and drop by drop, the gynecologist intervened one last time. As a result of the procedure, my uterine wall appeared to have adhered and the small amount of endometrium that still bleeds every three weeks could not discharge the blood. Three options: remove my entire uterus, fix the adhesions or go on the pill to prevent the bleeding. The latter also turned out to be a cure for the PMS, so that’s the option I chose. In the lightest possible variant, because I no longer needed contraception.

Moreover, without monstrous PMS, a relationship suddenly turned out to be an option again. Last month my new love and I woke up together in a hotel bed. I felt it immediately when I woke up: I was on my period. The sheets were spotless, thank goodness my dear too. In the room next door, two teenagers with whom we planned a game of water polo later that day were snoring in the hotel pool. I was so happy that I immediately texted all my friends. That’s another way to do it.”

This article is in Kek Mama 04-2021.

Want to read more personal stories? Subscribe here to Kek Mama, the #1 glossy for mothers.