The Nearest Of My Near Death Experiences

I’m sure you’re aware that there are several women who don’t like to talk about their monthly period.  You know, those women who utter “napkin” and “do I have a stain?” in a very very soft voice, so soft that the person they are talking to would answer them “Huh? Come again?” with a straight bland face.  Anyhow, as I was mentioning, there are some women who don’t like to talk about their monthly period, and bloody hell, (pun intended) I am not one of them.

This past Saturday, my family and I were all revved up around 9am to head to Subic. We were meeting my maternal aunt and cousin, who live in Bataan, for a day of shopping and pig out at random Subic Freeport establishments.  Before we left our house, I already felt that I was about to have my period.  So I did my necessary monthly procedure, which includes 1.)bringing a napkin, aside from what I’m wearing, 2.)drinking pain reliever, and 3.)preparing for oh no, not another “near death experience!”

 
You see, I first had my period when I was 10. Yup yup! And since then, my life was never the same again.  Every red day is a “near-death experience” in the making because of the unfaltering loyalty of dysmenorrhea.  And due to this, every red day is drug-addiction day as well.  I sometimes drink small dosage of Medicol and other times would beg for a higher dosage of Ponstan.  I can’t really describe nor explain the kind and level of pain that dysmenorrhea brings me.  All I know is that the pain hurts my tummy area badly that it makes me sweat like a pig inside of an air-conditioned room, makes my stomach feel empty as if I didn’t eat for 2 days, and impairs my brain like I never slept for 72hours straight.

 
Back to the Subic story.  Even after I had ingested Medicol, the pain still persisted. Actually, it kept on getting worse.  By 11am we were already in Pampanga.  We had a stopover in a store of a gas station somewhere in the province where my family ate some broas and Nagaraya crackers while I was uttering my ferocious pain.  Around 11:30am, we were passing the town of Guagua.  I was lying in the backseat when my parents and brother noticed a hospital in sight and right there, they threw me the question, “O, may hospital, dadalin ka na?!”  I answered yes, without any hesitation.

 
I was in my most terrible dysmenorrhea condition. In roughly 144 times that I had my period, 120 of those were excruciating, this one is yet the worst.

 
I was weak I had to be in a wheelchair from car to emergency room.  Minutes after I checked in Pampanga Medical Specialists’ Hospital, a male nurse attended me and examined my blood pressure.  It was 90/60.  It was too low.  Um, I don’t really have an idea on BPs but by the way the nurse said it, I believe it’s not good.  He said it like “sobrang baba po.”  And he put that stress on “sobrang” like it was pretty bad, as bad as jogging pants paired with black leather shoes for an office-attire.  Minutes passed and another nurse attended me, injected me some (oh my goodness, what’s that weird medicine name again? oh stupid, just make use of google search! great, now I know it!) Tramadol.  It is another kind of pain reliever.  

 
About 15-20 minutes later, the pain was lessened and I was back in my perky mode.  So we then got back on the road before we all hurt our tummies for not eating lunch on time.  It was already 1pm when we reached Subic and I wasn’t feeling a tinge of hurt anymore.  The pain was gone just in time for a great lunch and ransack-shopping.  Now that’s what I’d like to consider sunshine after the rain.  Haha!