You should read what you provide.

[Joyius]

Reading through the sick bay, I remembered something from when I went to a nearby high school.

My home room was basic health and nutritional stuff, and we had started reading on women's basic health, we get to the part about menstruation and how a majority of a time menstruation cramps can get so bad they can be a health issue. Wouldn't you know that I get very bad cramps when second period starts up, and I'm sent to the nurses room.

NA=Nurses assistant.
N=Nurse
Me=

Me: *Laying on the bed, hoping my mom can come pick me up so I can get some ibuprofen into me and go to bed.*
NA: *Enters the room and sends me a glare, comes over.*Just so you know, cramps can never get this bad and are never a health issue. I've never had such bad cramps that I've had to leave work.
N: *Standing just outside the door so she hears this**Hurries in to shoo NA out* I'll call your mom!

Any woman here knows how bad cramps can really get! Mine are usually just very bad on the first day, they can get so bad for me I get lethargic and just don't want to move! But this woman had the audacity to even say something like that! Heck I've heard stories of where girls can be screaming in pain just from cramps! Sheesh!

[Midnight12]

very unprofessional of her. she is one of the fortunate few that never got them or counteracts in time. well good for her now lay off the rest of us!
welcome to the cramps club, hands you the painkiller of choice (lol)

[dragon_wings]

I would get cramps really bad, until I started using a hormonal birth control. That cut down on the intensity of my cramps (to barely a nuisance). But I vividly remember laying in bed trying to sleep and I so much pain I couldn't. My doctor even prescribed a version of aleve (naproxen sodium) for me to take when they were at their worst.
*hands you a bunch chocolate*

[Midnight12]

yeah funny thing, aleve worked better than midol or pamprin EVER could.

[Joyius]

Yeah, aleve works a lot better than ibuprofen does! Wish I knew that back then, I usually just take the recommended dose, take a nap and feel a lot better, but on days when we can't get the meds, it just really sucks.

Funniest thing about this too? I was trying to tough it out, but I was in so much pain, tears were streaming down my face that my second period teacher got worried about me and forced me to go to the nurses office.

[Food Lady]

Obviously she's never had her uterus try to turn itself inside-out. That's what it felt like when I had those hemorrhage months.

[dbuzman]

The NA is one of those people who thinks if something is a certain way for her then it's the same for everybody no matter what anyone says.

[iradney]

Well woopty doo for you, NA. Aren't you just a speshul snowflake? Gah. I never had issues with cramps in HS. Now I'm starting to get them - thankfully not as bad as "I'm being punched in the stomach by an MMA fighter", but still.

[Teskeria]

When I was active duty the doctor prescribed Muscle Relaxers (Norgestic Forte) for my cramps. (yeah I still remember the name this long afterwards, cause it worked!) From when I started at about 17 years old, until I was around 35-40, my cramps were so bad I could barely do anything. My sister used to get smugly mean about it until my mother mentioned to her that in our family the cramps were either nasty when you were young, or when you got past 30.

[Marmalady]

*nods* When I was 15 / 16 ish my cramps got so bad I used to actually vomit sometimes. I remember lying in bed, curled around a hot-water bottle, with my mother bringing tea and paracetamol.. she shook her head and said "I don't know what else to suggest" to which I replied through gritted teeth "How about a hysterectomy?" And believe me, at that moment I meant every word - I could have cheerfully had the op just to be done with it all.
When I got married, the pill made such a huge difference, I couldn't believe how much.

[Eisa]

The pill has made a wonderful difference. I don't know how I made it through junior high and high school.

Yet even now I still have cramps sometimes that are so bad, I can't move.

Miss NA is lucky you didn't punch her in the stomach and show her exactly how you were feeling...

[morgana]

I actually tried in my early twenties to get a doctor to do a hysterectomy. Didn't work, of course.

I've had cramps so bad that if I could have gotten up off the bathroom floor and reached the medicine cabinet, I would have slit my wrists. I was convinced it would hurt less.

And ibuprofen was a godsend . . .

[Kanalah]

In HS I used to have cramps so bad that I couldn't walk.

My mom's cramps were never really bad, so she would just tell me that I was a wuss and to deal with it. One day my cramps were so bad all I could do was lie on the floor in the fetal position and cry. My teacher went to the office and called my mom, telling her that I wasn't faking it and I needed to go home and rest.

My mom yelled at me the whole way home about how I was a big baby and couldn't handle real life.

Can you tell my mom is crazy?

[Joyius]

My little brother would roll his eyes at me whenever I'd complain about cramps, and call me a baby...of course he's a male, he wouldn't understand.

[bhskittykatt]

That's nice, NA. Now STFU.

I get really bad cramps. I will be doubled over, and Hubs will be "I thought the Pill was supposed to help with that?" At which point I glare at him and, through gritted teeth, growl "the Pill is helping!" Before the Pill, I would be pretty much completely paralyzed when they would hit sometimes. Now they're still very painful, but not quite paralyzingly so.