E's story

E sent me her story earlier today. As with Mary and Lori B, The Pill wasn't so much about birth control, as it was about managing her periods and the health effects of their periods.

E writes:

My pill story is hardly a dramatic one, but nonetheless I feel like birth control helped me a great deal in my youth.

When I was a teenager, I had hellish menstrual cycles--a heavy flow that lasted ten or more days and left me iron-deficient, terrible changes in mood that I always had to apologize for later, and weeks of cramps so bad that I frequently missed school for days at a time because I couldn't eat or even get out of bed. And I never knew when it was coming, since it was always irregular. My grades began to fall because I was either missing school, or being an absolute beast to my teachers. It was definitely a disruption to my life, one that I dreaded.

I thought it was something that I was going to have to live with for the rest of my life until finally, when I was sixteen, my mother took me to the gynecologist. The doctor gave me birth control pills to regulate and lighten my periods. It helped ENORMOUSLY. Suddenly I had these wonderfully short, predictable three-day periods, and my cramps were manageable. I didn't become a monster every few weeks. I didn't need to take iron supplements anymore.

That was years ago. I know it's not a terribly exciting story--I didn't need birth control to keep me from becoming a teen mother, and I didn't have to squelch the odds to get my hands on it, it still helped me a great deal. And I know there are many more women out there just like me, who would be a sobbing mess on the sofa every three weeks were it not for their BC pills.

--"E."