IT IS THAT TIME OF THE MONTH!

How rocky can the path to womanhood be? Pretty rocky for some, like Savannah* who spent her teenage years wishing she had been born a boy!

I met Savannah when she was 19 years old. She was in her second year of university and had been referred by the campus nurse to see a gynaecologist. Savannah fit every description of a model. She was tall, slender, with beautiful natural hair and flawless skin. She laughed when I asked if she had ever considered modelling as a part-time job.

Savannah spent most of her high school years in the awkward phase where her body couldn’t seem to make up its mind which direction it was headed. She was way taller than her peers but while they were blossoming into womanhood, she remained rail thin with no sign of feminine features setting in.

This lasted till her third year of high school when everything started happening all at once. Her bust filled out and her menstrual period showed up. She was finally catching up with the rest. What she had not counted on however, was the chaos her periods would bring. Menarche arrived with a bang! She vividly recalls her first period lasting 13 days! It was the most traumatic 13 days of her life.

Savannah was an only girl in a family of four. She was also the youngest. By the time she was getting to high school, her brothers, who were way older, had left home to go college. Her mother was away in Asia for a work assignment for the year and she was home alone with her father. She had no idea how she was going to broach the subject with him.

She had an ample supply of pads from her mother’s closet but she had no idea what to do about the wretched pain she was experiencing. She locked herself in her room, crawling from the bed to the toilet to throw up and back again. She preferred to lie on the cold floor to ease the pain. She could not eat anything and did not want to see anyone.

She could not understand why her pads were filling up so fast and any time she sat on the toilet bowl she thought she was bleeding out her entire circulatory system. By midnight, she thought she was surely going to die. She woke up the housekeeper who in turn woke up her father. She was rushed to hospital. The doctor who saw her in the busy emergency room gave her a shot for her pain, prescribed some pain killers and some tranexamic acid (medication that helps minimize bleeding) to take at home and asked her to see a gynaecologist. The injection worked rapidly and when she got home she was able to sleep well the rest of the night.

The next day she felt fine and was able to attend school despite the numerous trips to the bathroom to change her pad. Her friend consoled her and told her that it was normal for first time periods to be extremely uncomfortable but they would settle with time. This was further reinforced by her mom that evening as they chatted on the phone. However, she still lived in mortal fear of soiling her skirt and having the boys giggle behind her back! She would die of embarrassment.

She never did visit a gynaecologist until the day she walked came to my office. She had spent four years having painful periods for which she had to remain on pain medication. She has taken iron supplements on and off as she was losing too much blood. She kept a ready stock on heavy duty night wear pads for use as her flow was still very heavy and she wore jeans and long dark tops during her periods to stay safe lest she stained her clothes. She had discarded dozens of panties which she couldn’t clean the stains off.

In her four short years into the journey of womanhood, she had nothing positive to say about her menstrual experience. She echoes the thoughts of many young women that a normal physiologic process could cause a woman such indignity. That she loses 10 to 12 days every month to what should be natural. She envies her brothers for being men who only have to deal with a breaking voice in teenage yet women must put up with drastic body shape changes and then menstruation.

Savannah represents many girls across the globe. As we champion for all girls to access to sanitary pads free or at least affordably, let us also focus on creating awareness around menstruation and its attendant complications. The old wives tale that painful periods or heavy periods are normal needs to be done away with. Telling young girls to tough it out until they have babies is not correct. Pregnancy does not cure period complications.

All young girls and women need to access proper gynaecological care when that time of the month is not business as usual. Sometimes the complications are a sign of underlying gynaecological conditions such as polycystic ovarian syndrome or endometriosis; or even medical conditions such as thyroid disorders. They must be properly addressed.

In addition to educating the women, it is imperative that men and boys get informed too. Since men intend to share their lives in future with women and make families together, they are better able to provide support when they have an idea of what is going on. They will be fathers to daughters and they should be able to provide correct information to their little girls when they are called upon to. Let men not just pay lip service by thinking it ends with buying pads.

Yesterday, the world marked the world menstrual hygiene day. We hope that this day will continue to destigmatize matters of menstruation and empower girls and women to fully embrace womanhood with pride.