Twenty-Something Year Old Journalist

There is a foreign object in my body and I have been in indescribable pain for the past four weeks. 

This is a pain that overcomes even the strongest Ibuprofen dosages, a pain where all you can do is lay in a fetal position, moan and groan, and wonder how medically preventable this all would be if men were the ones with a uterus.

I’ve scoured the internet trying to determine if my inability to do anything other than moan and groan would be classified as ‘severe,’ but am left only with fears of medical emergencies and self-diagnosis floating around my head. I shouldn’t fear though, as this pain should only “last for a couple of days[…]” (Raleigh Gynecology & Wellness, PA). But also might “last for […] weeks” (MedicalNewsToday). Oh! But in some cases “it’s common to have cramps for up to three to six months after you’ve had an IUD fitted” (Flo Health). 

This pain often then morphs into repentance as I realize I have willingly elected to proceed with a medical procedure that has sparked much conversation about women’s pain being underrecognized and minimized within the medical community. 

I think about the alternative—a pill the size of my fingertip that I must take at the same time for the rest of my life that comes with a list of side effects long enough to fill a commercial break. 

And I know what you’re thinking. All this just because you don’t want a kid? Not even.  

Take away these lifelines and I am forced to live dramatically depressed for the week leading up to the gory battle my innocent underwear, pants, and sheets must face monthly. It is only in these moments of bloodshed and ache that I ask “Are you there God? It’s me, Kylee.”

It all sounds so fabricated and hyperbolized when put down on paper—a miserably painful natural phenomenon that occurs in half of all of humanity being virtually disregarded by the medical community (and the other half of humanity), reduced down to only a 800mg dose of Ibuprofen and the reassurance that getting kicked in the balls is a worse fate to endure. 

Not to mention! This miserably painful natural phenomenon that occurs in half of all humanity also happens to be responsible for the very lives of that half of humanity and the other half too. 

For something that is responsible for every being on this Earth, affecting half of the world’s population, you’d think there’d be a little more effort to understand this natural phenomenon.

Just to think that I, a fellow menstruation-haver and eventual menopause-possessor, learned what actually happens to your body during menopause from a podcast (derogatory). 

Although I wouldn’t say this particular podcast is derogatory, the lack of education and medical devotion to women’s reproductive health is disparaging at best. Women’s health should be taught in the classrooms and textbooks, not on entertainment platforms one must seek out to find. 

We have a long way to go before women’s reproductive health is actually understood and recognized by the very people whose lives would not be here if it weren’t for women’s reproductive health, but in the meantime, it shouldn’t be too big of an ask to simply not dismiss women’s pain. 

Although some small steps are being made with The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists finally urging doctors to “not underestimate the pain experience[d] by patients” from gynecological procedures, it comes only at a time where women have been continuously, breathlessly begging for our reproductive pain to be acknowledged. 

To walk into the increasingly common procedure of intrauterine device insertion, mentally prepared for the intense discomfort that should be unnecessary, only to find yourself still in indescribable pain a month later—with the medical industry’s sole response being a mere shoulder shrug—should not be the norm. 

We’ve walked on the moon. We’ve made self-driving cars. But yet we still can’t manage to take women’s pain seriously within the medical field. 

Women are already responsible for creating all of life—what more must we do to prove that our pain deserves the same attention as anyone else’s? 

In the meantime, I will continue to lean on my prescription Ibuprofen and decade-old heating pad hoping to find the strength to unfurl myself from fetal position and take my war-ridden sheets out the dryer—only to do it all again next month.