For years, I thought everyone planned their lives around their heavy periods
🩸 Today, women can turn their bleeding into an actual number and get answers
Approximately one in five women with heavy menstrual bleeding has an underlying bleeding disorder, yet many wait years for a diagnosis.
I wore dark clothes to school, kept my backpack stocked like a field hospital, and did the quiet math of how long I could sit through a class before I had to get up. I thought that was just what having a body meant and that other girls were simply better at handling it.
It took me years to learn that what I'd accepted as normal was one of the most common signs of a bleeding disorder. And that the thing I'd been missing all along wasn't toughness. It was a common language — a way to turn my bleeding into an actual number a doctor couldn't shrug off.
Your period is data. Here's what I wish someone had told me.
🔗 Read the full column on Hemophilia News Today
