When my friends got their periods, they complained of cramps and teariness. I was a late developer, so when I got mine, I assumed what I experienced was the same as theirs. For a week in the run up to my period I would become exhausted, anxious and neurotic. Four days before it began, I would sleep for up to seventeen hours at a time. When I woke, I would be so bloated that I would cry in pain, resembling a pregnant woman. My appetite became uncontrollable, resulting in binge eating and extreme cravings. I had manic depressive episodes, sobbing on the floor, left feeling suicidal. This was what they described as feeling ‘emotional’, right?
My name is Emma. I lived for years with an undiagnosed debilitating mental and physical health condition. PMDD stands for ‘Pre Menstrual Dysphoric Disorder’*. It is a condition where regular Pre-Menstrual Syndrome (PMS) becomes heightened to the point of disability. Women who experience PMDD find themselves in a mental state worse than Major Depressive Disorder, and only marginally better than PTSD**.
When I was sixteen I begun suffering from regular head-splitting migraines, accompanied by visual auras — fuzzy patches where my vision would disappear. I was sent home to sleep until the pain had passed. I recall telling my parents that it was as though a dagger were piercing my head, yet if I took painkiller it made me throw up…
