Lola

Brief Outline:

Lola is 18. She has had difficulties with irregular periods that could be very heavy and painful, impacting on her across school and work. She has had mixed experiences with GPs and healthcare, and reflects on the challenges of explaining pain and feeling believed. She had hoped for tests to look into the cause of her period difficulties, but understood that she was not able to have these until she is older. She found that muscle heat packs help, and has made sure these are now freely available through her school. She uses hormonal treatment, which has made her periods infrequent, which on balance is better.

Lola didn’t feel prepared for how heavy the first days of her period would be, and found this quite frightening.

I think that would help people a lot more is for them to be told: “It’s going to hurt most likely, it might hurt a little bit less some days, you’ll ha... have heavier bleed days than others,” ’cause that was what scared me every time was the first couple of days for most people are heavy bleed days, and then the last couple of days are really light, but you never get told that at school, and you never get told that your... how... be in a lot of pain and the pain could radiate up your back and this, that, and the other could happen, and that’s kind of... I think that’s slightly more important than knowing... I know it makes sense to know the biological side of it, ’cause it explains it, but you don’t get told the stuff that you’ll notice is happening.

No. So having them both together—

Yeah.

—would have helped you.  And I mean, you used the word ‘frightening’?

Yeah, because the first couple of times I got my period, the first couple of days were really heavy bleeds, and that was just kind of me going: ‘I think I’m bleeding too much, this is not normal,’ ’cause no... They tell you you’re expected to lose like two tablespoons, but they don’t tell you that that could be in very large amounts and then in a couple of little drizzles, they kind of just tell you: “It’ll be two tablespoons across five days,” and you think, ‘oh, that’s nothing, that’s no amount of blood at all, that’s fine,’ and then it happens and you go: ‘that’s fair... a fair bit actually.’

Lola found by chance that heat pads helped her cramps. She told her friends about this, and then campaigned to make them available for other young people at school.

Did you ever have any experience of trying to get pain relief at school, or to go and see the school nurse?

In order to get pain relief at school they would have to call your parents and ask and then it would be the weakest and smallest dosage of ibuprofen that they could give, which does not a lot. It doesn’t do much, especially with period pains and they never had any form of heating products, so I ended up... this was a thing that I put into all school bathrooms was Deep Heat have stick on pads, which once they touch your skin they stick on and they stay hot for eight hours, you can wear them for up to 16, so I put a box of them in each toilet because you just stick them on and it’s a hot water bottle that you can walk around with. It doesn’t get hot enough to burn your skin, it is recommended for muscle pains and no one’s ever thought of using them before. It’s like—

’cause that’s one of the things that you worked out what to do,—

Yeah, that’s the one of the things...

—and then you were kind of working out what to do at the very beginning, is that one of the things that’s—?

’cause I had work one day and it was quite a long shift and I had especially bad cramps that day and I saw the Deep Heat stick on hot patches and I thought, ‘couldn’t hurt to try,’ and it takes about 10 minutes to heat up and then it’ll stay hot for eight hours, and I ended up telling all of my friends about it ’cause it was just like: “Guys, if you can’t take a hot water bottle somewhere with you, buy these, you can get them from Tesco’s, there like three quid for a five pack, and they work all day.”

And do they help?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, ’cause it’s just a portable hot water bottle, but you don’t need a kettle or a microwave, or anything, you just peel off the back and then stick it on.

And you can work with it on?

Yeah, you can work it on... it’s completely flat against your skin, and it’s the same size as just like a large plaster, so it’s thin and it just stays on and it doesn’t peel off or anything, and I ended up telling everyone I knew about it ’cause so many of my friends had cramps and like: “No, I need to stay home because I can’t bring a hot water bottle in,” and I was like: “Oh, but you can.”

There are some people who would use hand-warming packets where you snap the metal, but they get too hot to be kept on the skin for too long, so I was like: “Oh, no, this is made to be stuck on muscles to help relieve pain – trust me – it works.” And even now I tell my friends about it and my friends are like 20 and they’ve been doing this for six or seven years were: “When did you find this out?”

And that’s one of the things I found out myself because I thought, ‘it can’t hurt to try.’

Lola’s school introduced free period products when she was in Year 11, but it meant a visit to the Head of Year’s office. She and her friends had already started an informal system themselves of leaving products in toilets.

It wasn’t until I was in Year 11 that they started doing a period box, but that was in the Head of Year’s office, so it wasn’t even a case of: if you need it you can run to this bathroom and find it.

OK.

It was a case of: oh, you’ll need to go into the Head of Year’s office, which you’ll need permission from your teacher to do.

So, you had to tell them?

In order to access the red box, which might not even have what you need, or what you use.

And they called it the ‘red box’?

Of course, red box. And it was a massive red plastic box.

Do you think people felt comfortable using the red box?

They didn’t bring it in until I was about to leave the school and everyone in my year went: “Are they joking?” ’cause by that point there was a couple of bathrooms where the students had taken it among ourselves to just put things in there because it happened so often that you had nothing on you, or you’ll change and then have a really heavy bleed and you won’t have back up, so it got to the point where half the toilets just had a box of tampons, or a box of pads, and then—

And that’s amazing that the students did it.

Yeah. Yeah, the teachers had no clue about it, ’cause they didn’t go into those toilets ’cause they were just the student toilets, so half the time there would just be a box of like regular tampons and pads in all of the bathrooms, just that way if anyone needed it, because sometimes it’s the Year 7s who they’ve only had the basic stuff taught to them in Year 5, so we just kinda put it there, runaway.

Bless you. And then... and then the school’s response was to make a big red box.

A big red box, kept in the Head of Year’s office that you needed permission to go and enter.

And did you then need permission to go and open the box, or if you got to the Head of Year’s office you could help yourself?

If you got to the Head of Year’s office, as long as they were in there and the door was unlocked, you could kind of just go: “I’m just here to grab something from the box,” grab it and leave.

And did it have painkillers in it, or hot water bottles? So, did...

Yeah.

Because of her background pain condition, Lola feels she has a high tolerance for pain. She was encouraged by her friends to see a doctor about her really painful periods.

So, I’ve always had a fairly high pain tolerance, which made it even worse for me because I was in a lot of pain, but I didn’t have a way to describe it to them ’cause I couldn’t be like: “Oh, it feels like if you pull a muscle,” or if it feels like that, ’cause those things never really hurt me, but this was insane like debilitating levels of pain, and that was frustrating ’cause I didn’t have a way to describe it where it didn’t sound like I was over... being overly dramatic about it.

Yeah. That’s really... yeah, that’s really interesting. So, describing pain—

Yeah.

—to a doctor is quite difficult. But having tried to describe it and then getting the message that it was something you ought to get... that you would get used to: how do you think that affected you?

I think that kind of put me in a mindset where I was like, ‘oh, well, everyone’s doing this and clearly I’m just too weak to be able to handling it,’ and then I’d talk to my friends and they’d go: “None of us do that,” and that’s kind of when I went: ‘oh, OK, so this is a case of I need to speak to my doctor and get them to fully acknowledge that I’m in a large amount of pain.’

And they were quite difficult because I’ve always had a high pain intolerance, I’ve always been good with pain, but there’s not a way to explain that to a doctor and then go: “Oh, this really hurts,” ’cause they contradict each other, I’m like: “No, I can handle a lot of pain, and this really hurts.