Heavy Bleeding: Control It By Heat Treatment

About 19 percent of menstruating women suffer from menorrhagia, too heavy menstrual bleeding (see the letter below), which can require more than a dozen napkins or tampons a day, and can cause anemia.

Now there's a relatively cheap, reliable treatment just approved by the American Food and Drug Administration, although it's not for cases involving uterine cancer or fibroid tumors, or in certain other situations. And women should not plan to become pregnant afterwards, because of dangerous complications the partially destroyed endometrial lining can cause.

Called ThermaChoice, it can replace hysterectomy and ablation in many cases, ablation being another way of partially destroying the lining of the uterus to reduce bleeding. Hysterectomies are much more expensive than ThermaChoice, from $6,000 to $12,000 versus about $2,500 to $3,000. Ablations are also fairly inexpensive, and about as effective as ThermaChoice (about 80 percent of women are helped up to at least a year after the treatment), but they require more anesthesia and much skill from the surgeon.

ThermaChoice is effected by inserting a needle into the vagina and into the opening of the uterus, the physician introducing a balloon through the needle into the cavity of the uterus. A liquid then inflates the balloon and is heated to 188°F by a cable through the needle; eight minutes at that temperature destroys most of the lining of the uterus. The whole procedure lasts about half an hour, and can be done in a doctor's office. The patient resumes normal activities the next day.

Heavy Bleeding: Instead, Instead of a Hysterectomy

ThermaChoice (see above) can't be used for the condition described here, but the writer has solved it to her satisfaction with the menstrual cup Instead:

I've been struggling with the problem of inadequate products for years, having had massive fibroid tumors that went undiagnosed for way too long. I had surgery (a myomectomy) but refused a hysterectomy, but since they were unable to remove all of my tumors, I still experience pretty awful symptoms, among them incredibly heavy--and fairly unpredictable--bleeding. I've been stranded in the Port Authority bathroom on Christmas Eve, I've been unable to leave the stage after performances, and inconvenienced hundreds of other times because what I was using failed.

And that's exactly what you don't need to deal with when you're not feeling well to begin with . . . .I even had to pretty much give up bicycling because I just couldn't be out on the road away from a bathroom for long.

My life is DRASTICALLY different since I discovered Instead [menstrual cup] on my store's shelf recently. Yeah, it's messy to remove. So what? It's way better than running to the bathroom at my office sometimes every five or ten minutes! And blood washes off your hands way easier than off of your car upholstery, clothing and other folks' furniture. Anyway, as long as you're careful and kind of tip the cup upward a bit as you remove (rather than holding it level as suggested), it seems you can get better control and not squeeze it so much--which is what causes mishaps.

Anyway, I can't imagine that the benefits don't outweigh any messiness. And it's true--I was on the verge of considering going ahead with a hysterectomy, just because I couldn't get through a day at work, or because it'd take me hours to drive somewhere because I'd have to keep pulling over in search of an emergency bathroom stop.

I think now I can live with these guys!

Read other comments about Instead and The Keeper, another menstrual cup sold today.

The Joke's on Me!

I just received this e-mail from a female Norwegian university student near Oslo. In my little tour of a Norwegian museum's exhibit of the history of a Scandinavian menstrual products company, I printed a joke about blondes and winged menstrual pads, but mistranslated part of it.

During my visit at your MUM pages I had much fun reading the Norwegian joke about blondes. Unfortunately, there has been a slight misunderstanding. The Norwegian word "høy" have two common meanings: "hay" and "high". The joke refers to "høy" as in "high".

Therefore, the joke goes: Why are there 10 blondes lying at the foot of a high apartment building in Stovner? They had tried Libresse [menstrual pads] with wings.

By the way, Stovner is a suburb of Oslo, known for its lower-class inhabitants.

I guess Norwegian was not that easy, after all? :-)

Hanne Wien

On that Norwegian museum tour, I had bragged about having taught myself Norwegian. Obviously, I had not learned enough!

Speaking of the Odor of Menstruation . . .

Last week I ran some information on the odor of menstruation. My Canadian e-mail friend, male, comments on my comments:

. . . Things that are valued have scents and things that are disvalued have odors. I.e., they stink. E.g., garbage stinks, the skunk outside my window that sprayed tonight, etc.

If women are devalued during menstruation, it is small wonder then that they have this "odor." It differentiates them, negatively.

If they are going to be negatively evaluated for several days per month, don't you think it reasonable if not downright charitable of the hygiene and cleanliness industries to help them with their problem?

I have been around women for a long time. I have not smelled the odor from them. Perhaps I don't know what the "odor" smells like, but then, the women I know bathe regularly. The only times I have ever been able to smell them is when they have used scents from bottles of expensive perfume, some of which I have given as presents.

I don't entirely agree about the negative meaning of the word "odor." Actually, I usually say "smell" for both good and bad situations, but that seems colloquial.

Do Only Catholics Have Periods?

Today, a visitor to the museum from the Food and Drug Administration - from the food side of the house, not the drug (see the first item, above) - said that when she was a girl in the 1950s she went to a summer camp run by a Catholic organization. (She was a Protestant.) She had been told next to nothing about menstruation or sex by her mother or school, and neither had her camp mates.

As happens to girls 10 and 11 years old, someone got her first period. She was Catholic, and the rumor got around that only Catholic girls menstruated. How Protestants had babies - they must have babies, because she and her mother were alive, right?, and she knew a lot of other Protestants - was a mystery to the kids. A couple of girls DID know that there might be some connection between menstruation and babies, although what exactly, they weren't positive.

I remember that at the same age I found an 1890s medical text in our attic; the previous owner of the house had been a doctor. Somehow I deduced from studying bits of it and looking at the illustrations that, as I instructed my spellbound sixth-grade male classmates, the name of the thing between our legs was the pancreas.

You see? I was already well on the way to a career with the Museum of Menstruation!

Calling All Menstrual Painters, I!

A recent visitor to the museum left this request:

I am creating a show on menstruation and menopause, and looking for work in all media. It can be from a spiritual, cultural, personal, or historical perspective.

The show runs 9 - 19 April 1998 at the Pentucket Arts Center, Haverhill, Massachusetts (U.S.A.).

As soon as you can, contact Amy Shutt, Bradford College, Box 511, Bradford, MA 01835 (U.S.A.). Phone: (978) 469-1323, or e-mail: ashutt@bnet.bradford.edu

I need your work or proposals as soon as possible!

Calling All Menstrual Painters, II!

And here's another request:

Hi, I'm a student from Australia trying to contact some feminist artists who use menstrual blood as a medium - are you able to help me out? It would be much appreciated.

laura : alra.editors@adelaide.edu.au

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