I first got my period at age 13, and over the next four years was told over and over again that the excruciating pain keeping me bedridden for days was “normal,” that the irregularity of my cycle was “normal,” and that my extreme heavy flow, if not normal, was “nothing to worry about.”
My mom, my aunts, my sister, my gym teacher, my pediatrician, and my gynecologist all insisted that periods just sucked, that everyone experiences something like this, and they didn’t seem concerned when I tried to explain that my period was keeping me from functioning as a normal human being. I always missed at least two days of school a month. It was humiliating, confidence-killing, and painful as all hell.
When I was freshly 18, I started seeing an older boy and decided I needed a long-term birth control method. I called friends who had implants, IUDs, and the pill and asked what to get and where to go, and the unanimous answer was Planned Parenthood. I almost felt guilty walking through those doors as a teen in a white, middle-class city. I had been told Planned Parenthood was for people who couldn’t afford health care. But nonetheless, I gathered up my insurance card and my resolve and dragged my mother with me through the doors of Planned Parenthood.
My experience at Planned Parenthood was as smooth and comfortable as can be—I easily made my appointment online, the desk ladies were kind and funny, and the waiting room felt more like a living space than doctor’s office. When the clinician helped me decide on a generic brand IUD, she asked about the nature of my period and any associated symptoms. I laid it all out, expecting nothing more than the usual nod and affirmation that it was “normal.” Instead she looked at me with large eyes and a calm smile. “Have you been diagnosed with endometriosis before?” she asked.
I left Planned Parenthood that day crying tears of joy. There was a name for my suffering, and it was no longer just in my imagination. A month later, my IUD stopped my period altogether, and with it, most of my harsher symptoms. I now have an internet community full of resources and fellow endo thrivers (not survivors), and the validation that my pain was not a phantom. What my regular, “professional” doctors were not able to do, Planned Parenthood provided, and they gave me the resources to have control over my own body. For that I will be forever grateful.
