Silver Linings (in My Kotex)

Long-time readers of this here blog know that I love my period way more than any sane woman should. I love that it gives me a chance to complain and to skip the gym. I love that it makes me crabby with service people and paranoid with my loved ones. I love, basically, that it gives me material.

But when my thyroid got all effed in the ay, my period went bye-bye. Like completely. For months.

This meant that every month I’d have to buy a pregnancy test, which was annoying enough. (More annoying is that I’ve reached the age where clerks will look you in the eye when selling you these tests, and say, “Good luck!” I much preferred it when they assumed I was an irresponsible teenager and looked sadly at their own fingernails.) Eventually, I started buying them in bulk, to the point where Sgt. Lucky had nowhere to store his razors or his manly skin lotion.

Worse was the total absence of relief. I love having PMS, because when it’s over, it’s OVER. You go from being a loon that screams at pharmacy techs to a person who thinks smelly old winos on the bus are a beautiful part of humanity. When I was hypothyroid, I was basically premenstrual all the time, but the sobbing, achy version, not the fun, pissed off, “let’s burn the fucker down” version. (Punk rock periods! Hey, ho! Let’s go!)

Today, however, yes, today, I finally got my geedee period for the first time in six months. I would like to thank the Academy, and also Armour Thyroid, and also Mary Shomon, whose articles I printed out and shoved in my doctor’s face until she gave me Armour and agreed to jack my doses until I felt like a human again.