Unaffordable Agony: My Descent Into Dysmenorrhea

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Last night, I had two articles to write, and three to edit. My night was all planned out: I would go to yoga, come home and have dinner and a movie with my boyfriend while doing all my work. But my night didn’t exactly go down like that.

It started in yoga. I couldn’t quite get comfortable; no matter how many times I cracked my back and hips, I felt stiff and strained. By the time I got home, I was feeling nauseous on top of it. An hour and 1000mg of Ibuprofen later, I was writhing in agony. The pain was unbearable, radiating halfway up my spine, and down to my knees. I was nauseous, feverish, and my face looked identical to the “10″ on hospital pain scales. I was in such pain that my boyfriend had to physically carry me like a baby to the bathroom and the bedroom. The pain didn’t even start to subside for three hours.

In other words, I was starting my period. If you’re a squeamish Republican legislator, stop reading. 

My periods have always been painful. I’m not incapacitated every month, sometimes months go by with relatively little pain. But more often than not, I have at least one day a month derailed by sheer physical agony.

I started my period when I was 10 years old. I was home from school because I had been throwing up – something I often do while I’m on period. The symptoms got worse as I aged; when I was 20, my roommate once came bursting into my room because he heard me screaming and thought that someone was attacking me. When I was 15, I went on generic birth control pills, which subdued the cramps – once my body adjusted. For the first four weeks, I was plagued with constant nausea. But I couldn’t let myself throw up, or I would have to restart the birth control cycle. I finally found a birth control pill that worked for me with no side effects, but at my college, there was no pharmacy access, and my insurance didn’t cover three months of birth control at a time, which is what I would have had to purchase to have it delivered to me.

So I stuck it out. Every other month, every two months, sometimes every month, I would be struck down out of nowhere into horrific, debilitating pain. Once I graduated college, I spoke to my gynecologist who recommended an IUD. “Mirena,” she said with a chagrined laugh, “I wouldn’t dare put you on Paragard and run the risk of your periods being even heavier.” So I made an appointment to have Mirena inserted – it was the same sort of hormones as Yaz, the BC I had liked. This was July of 2011.

A day before my appointment, I got a call from my doctor. Mirena was going to cost me $1200, because my health insurance didn’t cover one cent of any kind of contraception. My mom had switched jobs since the last time I had purchased birth control, and now we didn’t have a prescription drug plan or any contraceptive coverage. I decided to wait it out again, and the HHS birth control mandate passed two weeks later.

Great news right?

Wrong. The mandate, like most of the Affordable Care Act, was full of gaping loopholes that giant companies could take advantage of. My mom’s company was one of them – and no one would tell us when our plan would cover contraception. I found this out in January of 2012, when I made yet another appointment to get an IUD. The cost? This time, it was $600, because I went to Planned Parenthood. They determined that that was the amount my boyfriend and I could afford to pay for birth control – even though it would have been more than half of a month’s rent. 

So here I am. Twenty-two years old, in my twelfth consecutive year of agony. My boyfriend and I are forced to resort to condoms even though they’re not as reliable and don’t offer me any relief. I self-administer a pregnancy test every month, even though we’re meticulous. Since I’m self-employed and the birth control pills I can tolerate would cost me $75 a month, it’s the only alternative until large companies are forced to comply with the Affordable Care Act – for some, that’ll be as late as 2014.

When people complain about the birth control mandate, this is why I am personally enraged. When people complain about “getting the government to pay for your free birth control,” my fury might be able to overpower even my worst symptoms. The mandate doesn’t make anyone pay for my birth control – it makes the money my parents and I pay towards our premiums go to something I actually use, not just to bloated salaries for the executives over at Aetna.

When people complain about the birth control mandate, all I hear is, “You deserve to be in agony every month. You deserve to live in constant fear of pregnancy even though you’ve tried to take responsibility for your sex life. You deserve to be unbearably nauseous if you go on the only hormonal birth control you can afford.”

I disagree. I missed enough days of middle school, high school, and college. I’ve missed enough deadlines, movie nights, and good nights’ sleep. I deserve better, hell, I pay for better. And if that offends your delicate sensibilities, your sense of “liberty,” or your “freedom of religion,” you can just curl up in the fetal position and moan through it. Take some Ibuprofen, and wash it down with some Pepto so you don’t get more nauseous while fighting the cramps.

Lord knows I have. 

  • Emma

    In the UK we have free subscriptions for people on a low income. I to, go through what you go through & get treatment THAT I DO NOT PAY FOR.
    We don’t hear working friends or family complaining its coming from their taxes etc. Its a society & that’s how a proper society should work.
    Over the years of being a teenager, I got the pill free & implants free. Christ, you just have to walk into the family planning clinic & they are more than happy to give you 50 condoms & 3 months worth of the pill. Loads of girls use the planning clinics now to avoid pregnancy, have free (limited) abortions or get checked for STD’s & referred to the hospital for .
    You see a lot less girls walking around the UK pregnant now compared to 10 years ago as well.

    A lot of people in the UK believe the American public would be better off with free family planning to, but it needs to be campaigned for. Sadly by not providing these clinics, America is just running behind the times & restricting women’s rights over their bodies. And its not just family planning, America’s lack of support for low income families is shocking.
    You should not have to pay ridiculously to be comfortable, happy & safe.

  • http://wendymukluk.com wendy

    what saved me from debilitating cramps (bent over clutching a hot water bottle and overdosing on painkillers, unable to sit, lie down, or stand, for 3 days sometimes) was menopause.
    it seems to me that minimizing or even eradicating dysmenorrhea should be one of the top priorities in medical research, since so many work and school hours are lost to it. dysmenorrhea is a detriment to industry, society, education, and more.
    oh, silly me, i’m just a dumb “girl”, and i should stop complaining and get back into the kitchen.

  • Terry

    I am sorry for your pain. Honest I really am. But that empathy does NOT extend to saying it is OK for the federal government to at the point of a gun TAKE thousands of dollars from me just so you won’t have to pay your own bills. There is a terrible cancer in America today. And there is no medical treatment for it. It is the belief that just because someone – ANYONE – needs something EVERYONE else should pay for it. If this were actually important to you – if your actual life depended on it you would find a solution. But as you pointed out, your life does not depend on it. You get by OK. You’d be happier if you had an IUD. But apparently not happier enough to get a second job, or do without cable TV, or high speed internet, or your iPhone. EACH of those would approximately cover the cost of your BC. And you probably have more than one.

    But the trap is even more sinister than this. Because if the federal government was not stealing approximately 50% of your income to “redistribute” to those even “more needy” than you, you could just pay this fee without noticing. What would you do with NO FEDERAL SAFETY NET AT ALL, but 50% more money each week? You are fighting on the wrong side of the wrong war.

    • http://accordingtosami.tumblr.com Sami Lawson

      Terry – I don’t know how much you make or how terrible you are with money to have 50% of your income “stolen,” but not paying taxes doesn’t help people who are so poor they don’t pay very many income taxes anyway. Augusta pays hundreds of dollars a month towards her health insurance, so why shouldn’t her health insurance cover the medication necessary to relieve her medical condition? That’s what happens with a “free market” and exactly why we need legislation like the ACA.

    • Dave

      People like you make me sick. Welcome to the pre-enlightenment world of ‘I got mine, screw you’ Your view is short sighted and selfish. No one in the richest country in the world should have to beg for mercy and charity. Shame on you and your self important world view.

      • TheExpatriate700

        When I see comments from people like Terry, I always wish we could exile them to places where central government has effectively ceased to exist, like Somalia and parts of Pakistan. They would be totally free and probably doomed.

    • Seriously?

      You simply cannot be a real person…you’re certainly not a woman or you would understand and sympathize with what this woman goes through every month! This is a *medical condition*. I, too, suffer from dysmenorrhea and have lost so many days from school and work it’s not even funny. It truly is AGONY. The pain is unbearable and yes, it often makes you vomit. Yet you don’t care, no matter how much you claim to do so in the first two sentences of your ridiculous post.
      Who is asking for anything free? Do you understand how insurance works? She’s talking about INSURANCE, not Medicare. She pays a premium each month and doesn’t even get her money’s worth! The gov’t is taking your money from you “at the point of a gun”? That’s possibly the most ridiculous claim I’ve ever heard outside of “the President is really Kenyan”. You make a lot of assumptions about this person: you somehow know that she has “cable TV, or high speed internet, or your iPhone.”…and, pray tell, why should *anyone* have to get a 2nd job to pay for a prescription?
      You really need to look inward and consider why you are such a miserable human being who lacks compassion and understanding. I worry for you and for anyone who thinks like you. I pray that you never have to experience the sort of pain that the OP and me go through 60 days out of the year.

  • Susy

    without birth control, my ovaries would have cysted all up, ruptured, possibly given me cancer, or requiring major surgery, and i wouldnt have been able to conceive the adorable baby i have now. i cant imagine what it would be like to have to go without it, with my condition OR yours :(

  • http://www.birthcontrolrecoverykit.com Kelly Knochel

    Hormonal birth control is actually made with Xeno-hormones, which is why women tend to hate the side effects.

    Human-identical progesterone is cheap, non-prescription, and when combined with the proper diet and other lifestyle modifications, the need for birth control to treat the symptoms of hormone imbalance goes away entirely.

    Obamacare is a giveaway to the medical-industrial complex that doesn’t actually address the cause of women’s problems. I suppose we should be thankful for the law for making our market even larger.

  • EH

    all I hear is, “You deserve to be in agony every month. You deserve to live in constant fear of pregnancy even though you’ve tried to take responsibility for your sex life. You deserve to be unbearably nauseous if you go on the only hormonal birth control you can afford.”

    Yes. That is exactly what they’re saying. “Curse of Eve” and all. What fuckers. I hope you can manage to afford Mirena or somehow get it covered without waiting two more years.

  • http://www.lawsonry.com/author/jesse Jesse Lawson

    Unfortunately, contraception is still an issue as we conclude this 12th year of our new millennium. Even the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists is now recommending IUD or implant contraception in teenagers (but they use that “science” thing, so we might not be able to trust them!).

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/iuds-implants-are-best-birth-control-methods-for-teenage-girls-doctors-group-says/2012/09/20/ff8f374a-0353-11e2-9132-f2750cd65f97_story.html

  • Amy

    This article. It makes me angry that you and women everywhere have to deal with this every month. It makes me angry that this is not considered as even one of the myriad reasons we need the AHA. There’s really nothing I can say that will make this better for you, but thank you for writing this. Maybe when more women start writing about their healthcare nightmares, maybe it will open people’s eyes to how everyone knows someone who deals with the inadequacies of our healthcare system every year, every month, every week, every day.