When I was eleven years old, I was away at summer camp and my period started. My counselors congratulated me. My mom was excited on the phone. But all I remember from that week is the smell of the bathroom, where I spent much of the week hunched over and bleeding.

That week was the model of every month after for me. I would bleed heavily for five to seven days, cramming toilet paper in my pads because I was ashamed of the number of “overnight” pads I needed daily. Some days, I was too sick to get out of bed for school.

When I grew up, I started using a menstrual cup to manage it. I learned it really was a giant mess of black-bloody clots and teaspoons of fluid several times a day.

Finally, I talked to my doctor about an IUD. I was married, but we knew that we didn’t want to have children. My husband has a chronic illness, and caring for him sometimes strains me. I knew caring for him and a child would be too much and unfair to the child.

The IUD changed my life. I had expected it to be a reliable method of birth control for the long-term choice my husband and I had made. But it was more than that. After a few months of adjustment, I started having almost no periods. I would use a single, thin pantyliner daily for a couple of days. I didn’t have to call in sick because of my period (or spend half my time in the bathroom at jobs where I had no sick time, worrying that I’d be fired). I didn’t have to plan events around that week of the month. I stopped having clothing ruined by a particularly bad gush that got out of sync with my protection and my pants or skirt.

I cannot express how much my life changed after fifteen years of experiencing such hellacious periods. Beyond the freedom it gives me and my husband to have a healthy sex life without worrying about increasing our family beyond what we can handle, it has given me a new lease on life. I only wish that I had started using it when I was younger and had not lost what added up to months of my life to such misery.