Am I wet? Am I on my period? Did I pee my pants?- next on wtf is going on down there.
I’m so glad this is a universal wondering among vagina-owners, haha.
‘Vagina-owners’
Tune in next time for: Are these menstrual cramps? Am I pregnant? Is it just gas? I wouldn’t have to ask these questions if I didn’t have a damn uterus
Next week: Is it a bladder infection? An ovarian cyst? Do I have endometriosis? Oh God please do not let it be cervical cancer! A 20/20 special
Y’all are forgetting the all-time classic: Is it just my period or is my appendix about to burst? Some nice tea and a heatpack or 911 and emergency surgery?
There is actually a test for that last one!
Place your hand over the pain, press down slightly and release. If the pain doesn’t change by any great margin, you’re fine. If it suddenly becomes some painful you can barely stand, Get thee to an Emergency Room
reblog for the safety of vaginas and their owners
The appendix test works with or without a vagina so reblogging for everyone.
And of course there’s old favorite rerun now in syndication: as an abuse victim or chronic pain sufferer, I have absolutely no sense of scale for pain that’s dangerous versus the same old shit I just have to live through.
Applies to all genders, of course, but relevant to the discussion of mystery pains and whether they might be a problem.
Tag: medication
This is not as melodramatic as it sounds:
Get that IUD. Stock up on birth control. Snag some morning after pills. Get a passport/make sure yours is updated.
What’s next at the Supreme Court will set us back generations.
Roe will be overturned as soon as they get that seat filled and if you think I’m exaggerating I’d urge you to look at the opinions this term and then consider what happens when all we have are Ginsburg, Sotomayor, and Kagan filing gorgeous, fiery dissents that will make absolutely no difference in what will come to pass.
Especially if you live in a state with a “trigger” law. Do it. Do it now, uterus owners. Protect yourself while you still can.
I was just discussing this. I think I’m going to.
If you have the resources to do so, stock up on birth control, emergency contraception, etc., even if you personally won’t need/use them. There may be a LOT of need later on that you could help with.
Hey, unpopular opinion, apparently. But people don’t just “have pain for no reason” doctors say this all the time (especially to women and chronically ill people) and the truth is, Thats literally not possible. Even if your pains are psychosomatic (a word I hesitate to even use because of the way its used so often) there is a reason you are having those pains whether its mental illness, abuse, etc. If your doctor consistently tells you that “well some people just have pain for no reason” get a new doctor. That’s a doctor who is not going to give a shit what your actual symptoms or experiences are.
I just wanna add to clarify the psychosomatic thing.
That word DOES NOT MEAN you’re making it up. It doesn’t mean you’re imagining the symptom. What it means is that the symptom ISN’T DIRECTLY CAUSED BY ANY OF THE THINGS THAT WOULD NORMALLY CAUSE IT.
I fought to get a PCOS diagnosis for 2 and a half years. For the ENTIRE time I was fighting, I was dealing with 3 cysts that were not going away by themselves and eventually required surgery to remove. At one point close to the end of the battle, I suddenly went blind. I was visiting my parents and was standing on the veranda looking out over the tree we had planted in memory of my dog and suddenly I got one of the shooting pains that I was quite frankly used to at that point and my vision started to go dark. It was like the sun was setting while being completely hidden behind storm clouds but it was 2pm in the middle of Summer on a clear day. Within about 30 seconds I couldn’t see ANYTHING. I was 27 years old and I was screaming for my mother.
My mum raced me to her doctor (he was a 15 minute drive away as opposed to 45 minutes to the nearest hospital) and he quickly worked out that there was nothing wrong with my eyes and what had happened was totally unrelated to them. Then he said it was psychosomatic and I freaked out, yelling that I was NOT making this up and I definitely wasn’t imagining it. Very quickly he calmed me down and said he believed me and I had misunderstood. He explained that whatever was going on with my abdominal pains (he suggested PCOS which I hadn’t even heard of at that point) had been ignored for so long that my body was starting to do things other than the normal pain response to try to draw my attention to the problem. My sight going was my body basically jumping around in front of me going “HEY ARE YOU EVEN LISTENING TO ME HELLLOOOOOOO??????”
He gave me some prescription strength painkillers and my sight started to come back as soon as they started to kick in. About 45 minutes after it started I could see well enough to walk around without help and within a day and a half I was back to normal. On top of that I finally had a scan booked to figure out what the hell was causing all the pain.
Psychosomatic symptoms are NOT imagined or fabricated or happening for “no reason”. Experiencing them DOES NOT make you a liar. It makes you someone who has been battling with something serious for so long that your own body has started to get impatient with you.
I completely agree. Thank you for sharing this.
wupacing 