(www.sass-pants.com) — There’s a crappy period, and then there’s menorrhagia.
Women with menorrhagia experience extremely heavy blood loss with each period. We’re talking more than double that of an average period (30-40 mL is standard), a flow that will soak through a regular pad or tampon in an hour. Women with menorrhagia often suffer from severe cramping and constant abdominal pain during every period, and it can interfere with their ability to lead a normal life.
Robin McIvor is a woman who overcame menorrhagia through endometrial ablation, and she was kind enough to talk to me about her life and her experience.
Sass Pants: Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background?
Robin McIvor: I’m a 38 year old Vancouver, Wash., resident where I live with my husband and daughter. My background was always medical. I have been a caregiver from the time I was in high school, I was a CNA and then I joined the Army. In the Army I was an optician and an optometric technician for a period of time, and then the military sent me to nursing school. I have been a nurse since 1993 when I graduated, and I have worked in the VA as a floor nurse, as a med-surg nurse, and then in 1996 I got hired in the emergency department in Vancouver, Wash., at the Southwest Washington Medical Center, where I currently work as a nurse. I currently work full time as a fireman and part time as a nurse.
Sass Pants: Why did you decide to join the Army? Have other members of your family been in the military?
RM: My dad and my brothers were in the military and my dad retired from the military when he was in his early 40s, when I was 4. After that, he worked as a contractor and an architect, so I had family history. My uncles, my cousins, everyone went into the military, and an added benefit was the military was willing to pay for my nursing school. I was willing do all the push-ups and sit-ups in the world, as long as I don’t have to pay back student loans.
I had a great career when I got out and then I got called back to duty that is how I ended up in Iraq in 2005. I was actually in inactive status for the military and they went through their roll calls and picked a bunch of nurses, veterinarians and water purification people to go to Iraq to do all the humanitarian aid. I took care of all of the medical stuff, I went about the countryside and took care of the local populace and figured out where their local clinics should be or where they needed to be, or renovating them and that sort of thing. My job in the war was quite rewarding. It was scary, but it was very rewarding, because the people are fabulous.
Sass Pants: You introduced Spirit of America to an Iraqi hospital. Could you tell us about this program and your work with The Najaf Teaching Hospital?
RM: The Sprit of America was a nongovernmental agency. It is a non-profit, and they raised money to purchase a cardiac monitoring system for the hospital. Their hospital was very rudimentary, electricity was sporadic and they had troubles diagnosing people.
That was my main huge project… The Najaf Teaching Hospital is in southern Iraq and it is their holiest city. The Najaf Teaching Hospital was a hospital that was taken over by the militia where they killed a bunch of the doctors and patients. It was basically bullet-ridden and flooded, and when coalition forces came in that was one of the big projects because there were no hospitals near by. American forces, a bunch of nongovernmental agencies, and a core of engineers went in to renovate the whole hospital, but they still didn’t have equipment.
I did a lot of the work with civil affairs, soliciting donations, because there is a lot of people that want to help but it is getting those people linked up with the right kind of people.
Sass Pants: You suffer from a condition known as menorrhagia. Can you tell us about this?
RM: I was always very regular, but after I had my daughter my periods were awful, and as I got older they got worse. After the birth of my daughter I tried birth control, but that never really helped my periods. After I underwent surgery, my periods got even worse. My periods continued to get worse and worse, all the way into my 30’s.
One month my period would be just heavy and cramping and terrible, and then the next month it would just be moody and awful. The final straw, the reason I went to my doctor, was we had a fire and I’m in my $600 turnouts (fire outfit) and I was ultimately always afraid of having an accident in them. When you take your pants off they are inside out, so everyone can see. One time I ran back to the station because fortunately the fire was behind the fire station so I could change. Most of the firefighters are men, so they aren’t going to understand having to run back to the station to change.
Sass Pants: Two years ago, you underwent a medical procedure called NovaSure. Tell me about this endometrial ablation procedure, why you had it done, and how it’s affected your life.
RM: NovaSure is great! I was so scared I’d have an accident at work or not be able to perform my duties that I finally went to talk to my OB/GYN about my heavy periods. I told him one of my girlfriends is a nurse in North Carolina and said that she underwent endometrial ablation and it made her periods better. So I talked to my doctor and he said we have a new procedure called NovaSure, let’s do this.
My doctor told me they used to do it as an outpatient surgery; I had it done in the office, which was nothing. All I felt was like 8 seconds of a cramp.
I took one day off and went to work the next day after the procedure. It’s like, if you get it done on Friday you can go back to work on Monday. I didn’t want to go back to work the day afterwards just because he said you know you might have some spotting for a while. It was nothing alarming and I was shocked that I was fine the next day. Having it done right in my doctor’s office was just such a breeze.
Sass Pants: Are you glad you did the surgery?
RM: I wish I had the NovaSure procedure before I went to Iraq. I don’t know what is worse: having an accident in your $600 turnouts pants at work, having to pee or change a tampon behind a humvee in the middle of public, or peeing in a hole. What do you do with your tampon when there is no flushing or anything, just wrap it up and take it with you? For backup you should always wear a pad with that tampon, which is what I did. When I worked at the fire department it was even worse, because you have wake up in the middle of the night and be ready to report to a fire. There were often times where I had accidents on the job when I had my period.
[I wish doctors would] tell their patients about the procedure, offer it to them, broach the subject. I had a girlfriend tell me and that is the only reason I knew, and she was an OR nurse so obviously if she had not seen it done neither of us would have known about it.
Sass Pants: What does the future hold for you?
RM: Until I retire, I won’t change a thing. My goal is, after I retire from the fire department… [maintain] my nursing skills. I mean realistically, even though we are first responders and the fire department and we run all the medical calls, we don’t transport you [and we are] only are working with the patient for 15 minutes and it is hard to continually maintain knowledge of medications, IV starts, stuff like that. …I get that at least working twice a month, and then when I will retire I will still have my nursing license and I will then be able to go into a clinic 20 hours a week. It’s wonderful to go to work when you don’t have to do it. You do it just because you like it, not because I need a paycheck. I enjoy it. I enjoy being a public servant.
Read more about menorrhagia:
- Menorrhagia, from the Mayo Clinic
- Menorrhagia, from Wikipedia
- Menorrhagia, from eMedicine Obstetrics and Gynecology
- Menorrhagia, from Women’s Health at About.com
Read more about NovaSure and endometrial ablation:
- NovaSure by Hologic
- NovaSure, from HeavyBleeding.com
- New rules apply after NovaSure, from BNET
- Endometrial ablation, from Women’s Health at WebMD
- Endometrial ablation educational pamphlet, from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG)
- Endometrial ablation, from HeavyBleeding.com
Contents Copyright © 2009 Kristen King
(photo courtesy of Robin McIvor)
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