When I was 17 my appendix ruptured because I thought I was just having period cramps and didn’t go to the hospital so don’t tell me PMS symptoms are no big deal
this actually happened to me during my math final and i didn’t think anything of it and when i was later admitted to the hospital my math prof was asking me ‘you didn’t have to take the final! why didn’t you tell me it hurt?!?!’ and i told him i’ve had cramps worse.
he gave me 100
This is actually an extremely common occurrence simply because in sex ed they don’t teach you how to tell the difference between menstrual cramps and other more serious pains. The way to tell the difference between cramps and appendicitis is that while menstrual cramps are generalized toward the middle of the stomach below the belly button, pain from a swollen or burst appendix will start in the middle of the stomach and relocate to only the lower right side, even lower than menstrual cramps, and is a very localized pain. It also comes on extremely suddenly and will worsen over time or when you make a sudden movement, like a cough or a sneeze.
Basically, if you’re feeling any sort of pain, even if it’s menstrual cramps, don’t hesitate to tell the school nurse or a parent, or if you’re out of school and home even make a doctor’s appointment. Chances are if your cramps are that bad there’s something they can do to improve that as well.
I am boosting the shit out of that reply, because I am twenty-fucking-five years old and did not know how to tell the two pains apart
Adding another diagnostic tool! This is something we use in the ER called the rebound test. Basically, appendicitis and cramps react differently to certain things. If you’re still not sure if you have cramps or appendicitis, take two fingers and press them into your abdomen where the pain is (try repeating this on the lower right quadrant of the abdomen just to be sure.)
When you press in firmly, it will probably hurt. Here’s the test: LET GO. Does it get better or get worse? Appendicitis will immediately hurt worse when you let go. Cramps will not. Go to the ER if the rebound test makes it worse!
THE REBOUND TEST IS REALLY IMPORTANT.
My husband got sent home from the ER with a rupturing appendix. When he came back and was rushed into surgery, the surgeon was super angry – “Why didn’t anyone do the rebound test?!”
All great info, but there is another lesson to be learned here: if you’re in major pain, it’s probably important - so don’t let anyone tell you it’s not. There is a documented pattern of women who go to the ER with complaints of pain being dismissed as overreacting…when in reality women have an incredibly high tolerance for pain, to the point that some don’t even realize exactly how serious their condition is. These stories only serve to illustrate this point.
Reblog to literally save a life.
Every time I see this..
Also even if you know for a fact it’s menstrual cramping: this is not a type of pain meant to be as bad as a ruptrued appendix. there is absolutely such a thing is being in too much pain from cramps. If you think, even a little, “this hurts more than a think it should”: get in with a doctor. Not a gp either, see a gyno. There are several reasons for unduly painful cramps, and there are solutions. Affordable ones, by the way, do not get convinced to take an anti-inflammatory that costs you $100 a bottle because your gp didn’t “want to go straight to the pill” for it. You do not have to go a week every month of your life in undue pain because we’re not told enough and we get shrugged off. Go until you find someone who will run the needed diagnostics to be certain you’re not in an abnormal amount of pain. You don’t deserve that just because the world seems to think you do
The baby girl that was born just a few hours ago… her father wants to drown her in milk because he didn’t receive a male heir!
Rekha as Ramdulaari // Lajja (2001)
This is why it angers me when people reduce Bollywood to frivolous musicals made solely for entertainment. Bollywood is a multidimensional platform that exposes a lot of prevalent issues in an often bold and unapologetic manner. Powerful scenes like the above illustrate how the Indian movie industry seeks to enlighten the public. I promise you, it’s not all song and dance.
The densest people on the internet are the ones who say sci fi and fantasy are are getting too political. Why can’t we go back to the good old days of The Twilight Zone, with its various episodes about mob mentality and the danger of mass paranoia that totally weren’t about the Red Scare. Or Star Wars and its genocidal empire of racially homogeneous Aryan men. Or Dune with its religious tribal peoples who live in a desert that contains the galaxy’s most valuable resource and the wars with the foreign colonizers, that was purely from Frank Herbert’s imagination. Can you imagine how much Star Trek would suck if it was packed to the brim with ham-fisted allegories of every societal issue of the 20th century. Not like all this modern ultra-political stuff, like a woman hero.
