Kristen King » Health

Interview With Soldier, Firefighter, Nurse, Mother, and Menorrhagia Sufferer Robin McIvor

Kristen King — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 15:25:29 +0000

(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:

Read more about NovaSure and endometrial ablation:

(photo courtesy of Robin McIvor)

February Is American Heart Month

Kristen King — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:00:07 +0000

(www.sass-pants.com) — Did you know that heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women age 20 and older? Or that it kills more women than the next 7 leading causes of death combined? Heart health is crucial to long life, but in today’s busy world, it’s easy to let simple health practices fall by the wayside.

Rite Aid is partnering with the American Heart Association and its “Go Red for Women” campaign by helping customers get heart smart with a free 12-page guide on heart health, available in all its pharmacies nationwide, and interactively online now through March 28. The stakes couldn’t be higher – an estimated 70,000 American women will succumb to heart disease in the next two months alone, according to the American Heart Association.

The first step to preventing heart disease is education, and trained Rite Aid pharmacists are a convenient and trusted source for personalized heart health tips. Rite Aid customers also can pick up the heart health guide, which was developed in conjunction with the experts at the American Heart Association and explains:

How to identify your risks for heart disease
The numbers behind heart disease: Body Mass Index (BMI), cholesterol, blood pressure and blood sugar
How to quickly identify symptoms of a stroke, which is similar to a heart attack except that the blood flow to the brain is interrupted
Tips on how to realize a healthy lifestyle of exercise and proper diet

Online content available now through http://www.riteaid.com/health/heart includes:

The “Go Red for Women” heart checkup
The American Heart Association’s heart profiler
Information on the connection between gum disease and heart health
Information on quitting smoking including an interactive timeline of health after smoking, a “smokulator” to tally smoke-free savings, and a customizable quitting plan including topics to discuss with your doctor or Rite Aid pharmacist
The Give Me 5 stroke warning signs

To further bolster the fight against heart disease, Rite Aid again is raising money for American Heart Association’s “Go Red for Women” campaign, which aims to debunk the myth that heart disease is a “man’s disease” and to reduce the risk of coronary heart disease and stroke in women by 25 percent by 2010.

Rite Aid associates nationwide will sell red dress pin-ups throughout February for donations of $1 or more. In return, customers will receive coupons for heart healthy products and other items. Customers who buy $30 worth of select heart-related products will receive a “Heart and Soul” T-shirt through Rite Aid’s Single Check Rebate program. Special heart-healthy displays also are in stores featuring products such as aspirin and fish oil that may boost heart health.

Whether you participate in the Go Red for Women campaign or not, take a few moments to review the heart health guide and make sure you’re doing everything you can to stay healthy.

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Why Can’t I Sleep?

Kristen King — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:28:55 +0000

(www.sass-pants.com) — It’s solidly the middle of the night here in Virginia and I am wide awake. Well, scratch that. When I’m vertical, I feel like I’m about to fall over from exhaustion. The moment I lie down, I feel like I could run a marathon.

Ever since my car accident, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. I just can’t get comfortable, or I wake up every hour or so for no apparent reason. I haven’t felt rested in a solid month. And tonight, I can’t stop thinking about poor Julius.

The normal things aren’t helping tonight: counting backwards from 100 in Spanish; trying to say the alphabet backwards; counting as high as I can without losing my place; trying to remember the lyrics to Disney songs in the order in which they appear in their respective movies; visualizing myself falling asleep from my toes to the top of my head; watching boring television. Nothing works.

What do you do when you can’t sleep?

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If Jesus Is Your Prozac, Depression Is the Least of Your Problems

Kristen King — Wed, 26 Nov 2008 17:26:45 +0000

(www.sass-pants.com) — How’s this for offensive? “Jesus Is My Prozac”

I was test driving my husband’s new truck when I saw that absurd statement on a sign in front of a church in Fredericksburg, VA, and I nearly ran off the road I was so aghast that anyone could possibly be so ignorant as to suggest that depression can be cured by a healthy dose of religion.

Depression is a medical illness, not a figment of your imagination, and being “a good enough Christian” is not the cure. Are you suggesting that I suffer from depression because I’m a big fat sinner? Perhaps because I don’t believe in Jaaaaayyyyyyzus sufficiently for miraculous intervention in my brain chemistry? Gee, that makes me feel SO much better. Give me a break.

Of COURSE if you’re feeling lonely and disconnected, finding a home in a supportive community with shared values and goals, religious or otherwise, can help you feel more grounded. If you feel like you lack direction, identifying yourself as a child of God or a member of whatever church or however you choose to see it can certainly give you a sense of purpose or meaning. Belief in a higher power can also provide encouragement and reassurance. But that is NOT the same thing as curing depression. It’s not. It’s not, and I resent the implication that it is. You know, as if that weren’t clear.

According to the National Institute of Mental Health,

An estimated 26.2 percent of Americans ages 18 and older — about one in four adults — suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in a given year. When applied to the 2004 U.S. Census residential population estimate for ages 18 and older, this figure translates to 57.7 million people.

Of the 57.7 million Americans suffering from a mental disorder, nearly 15 million suffer from depression according to 1999 NIMH statistics. No doubt the number has increased since then. And when I say depression, I’m not talking about feeling bummed. I’m talking about clinical depression, persistent and pervasive feelings of sadness, anxiety, emptiness, hopelessness, and guilt coupled with a lack of interest or pleasure in things you previous enjoyed, possible sleep disruption, possible panic disorder, possible loss of appetite, and all of the numerous other manifestations of depression. I’m talking about a disease.

Would you tell someone who’s allergic to bee stings and is going into anaphylactic shock that Jesus is her EpiPen? Or suggest to a diabetic whose blood glucose level is through the roof that Jesus is her insulin? Saying, “Jesus is my Prozac” is just as inappropriate, just as disrespectful, just as STUPID, and possibly even more damaging — because there’s nothing like telling a depressed person that their depression is their own fault because they lack faith to make them feel better at the end of the day.

Way to be supportive, Christendom. Good job.

You can learn more about causes, symptoms, and treatment of depression through the 25-page PDF Depression, published by NIMH or by reading NIMH’s brief depression fact sheet.