If you took time to ask the average woman about thirty years of age what information they were given in regards to menstruation, many will tell you it was a woman passing down as little information to you as humanly possible, with the hopes that you will somehow figure it out. There is an awkwardness and disassociation with which it’s done that you figure this is one of the worst things to happen to you as woman.
The first time I was told about menstruation was by a matron in my Primary school. It was a 10 minutes talk that went along the lines of “your journey to womanhood starts when you shed blood”. It’s a very secretive time for woman and you need to ensure you are and not jumping around. There was a brief demonstration of how a pad worked and that was it. She had done her part in delivering Menstrual Health Education.
Fast Forward to Primary Six December Holiday.
We had had breakfast and it was a serving of bread spread with honey. My tummy (I would later learn it’s the lower abdomen) starts to hurt and for the life for me I can’t tell what’s wrong. I writhed in pain, grabbing every single thing that could offer me some form of relief.
It was two hours before an adult came and I was taken to the room and my panties checked. A quick bath and two little capsules of indomethacin locally known as Indocin and I was told to sleep. It took me another decade before I could eat honey without associating it to pain.
While we talk as little as we possibly can about menstruation, we talk even less about period pain. There is an expectation that the silence with which you treat the menstruation topic should be applied to period pain or dysmenorrhea
According to the website womens-health-concern.org .Around 80% of women experience period pain at some stage in their lifetime. You can suffer from period pain from your early teens right up to the menopause. Most women experience some discomfort during menstruation, especially on the first day. But in 5% to 10% of women the pain is severe enough to disrupt their life. If your mother suffered period pains, you are more likely to suffer too. In 40% of women, period pain is accompanied by premenstrual symptoms, such as bloating, tender breasts, and a swollen stomach, lack of concentration, mood swings, clumsiness and tiredness.
For the longest time I loathed “That time of the month”. For me it meant that for a solid two days every month I would be in pain.
Not the sort of pain where you can sit in class and get on with life. The sort that sent me to the sick bay every month. The school nurse had a joke about me paying for my kibanja in the sickbay. I was fortunate enough to go to a single sex school, where there was a bit of understanding in regards to pain
But I know many women who were told to be stoic about their pain. If you can keep your periods a secret, you can keep your pain in check.
And this is how many women and girls over the years have ended up self-diagnosing and taking all manner of pain killers to keep up the façade.
Many people start on Panadol, the 2* 3 Dosage and by end of the first year they are at 3*3. There is a swift migration to other stronger pain killers and most times this is on word of mouth recommendation.
There is a lot of pain killer abuse, because people are not openly talking about period pain. And this is on top of other issues like sanitary pad access, don’t even get me started about the pads that scorch you and because you don’t know better or don’t have the money to pay for better you have to “make it work”.
There is need to normalize talking about menstruation and the various aspects that come with it like period pain. For 80% of women to go through something monthly and it’s swiftly swept under the rug is baffling to say the least.
Schools need to equip the teachers who speak about reproductive health to not only speak about how to better take care of ourselves during the time of the month but also talk about dysmenorrhea.
Going by the Ugandan culture of over the counter medication, we need more doctors speaking out about the various pain killers we stuff ourselves with and their side effects.
Half-Life 