Right Now

38. Just a hint of pain

My excitement at being invited to spend next weekend in Amsterdam with Harry evaporated like ice on a hot plate.

How could it have slipped my mind that I was going to be on the first two days of my period? And that most likely meant I was going to be out of action, not just when it came to sex, but when it came to doing anything that didn't involve lying in bed and groaning in pain.

From the moment I got my first period a month before my 13th birthday, they had been painful. I couldn't understand why everyone else was able to carry on with life as normal, yet I spent several days every month wracked with agonising cramps.

By the time I got to 15, it was so bad my GP put me on the Pill and that did help, a little, for a while. But the pain had been getting worse over the last couple of years and now it had reached the stage where I usually needed to take some pretty heavy duty painkillers the doctor had prescribed, and sometimes they weren't particularly effective.

Some months were better than others; in a good month I was incapacitated for just a day and could function the rest of the time thanks to the drugs. But then other times, it was so bad all I could do was roll into a ball in bed, clutch my stomach and wait a couple of days for it to pass.

Over the last few months it had become so severe that Mum began nagging me to go back to the GP and get a referral to a specialist. I'd been putting it off but she was right – I needed to do something about it.

So for the moment, I was putting up with it with the help of Ponstan and codeine, which I wasn't happy about taking but couldn't have managed without.

And I'd got used to having to plan my life around my periods, and missing out on things when the pain was just too much.

Normally, I would never have contemplated travelling to another country when I was on my period, let alone spending a couple of days with someone who didn't know about my issues. Even if it happened to be one of my less painful periods, it still wasn't going to be a lot of fun for Harry to be around me. And sex would definitely be out of the question.

There was no way I could go. But fuck it, I would be turning down the opportunity to spend more time with Harry. In Amsterdam.

I spent the whole flight home from Glasgow twisting my mind into knots as I tried to work out what to do. And after my mum picked me up from the airport, and I'd given her a rundown of what had happened over the weekend, I asked what she thought I should do.

"You know how bad you can get," she said. "How are you going to cope in Amsterdam if it's really severe this month?"

"I don't know," I said. "But what if it's not so bad? Some months, if I stay on top of my medication, I can cope with the pain."

"But love, what if this one isn't one of the bearable ones? Do you really want to go all the way to Amsterdam just to spend it huddled in bed? Imagine travelling when you're in severe pain. And what is Harry going to think?"

"He's going to think I'm a complete loser," I muttered. "He won't want anything to do with someone who turns into a pathetic mess once a month."

"I don't think he will be horrible about it – he seems too nice for that," Mum said. "But he is going to have to find out sooner or later, if you two are going to get involved. It's not the sort of thing you can hide from him."

She was right about that. I should probably tell him, and explain why going to Amsterdam this weekend was not a wise idea. But what if my period didn't turn out to be too bad after all and I was able to manage the pain? I would be kicking myself all weekend.

Abby agreed when I phoned her after dinner. "Remember that time we all went to my aunt's holiday house for the bank holiday weekend and you weren't going to come because you were on your period? You were fine in the end. I mean, I know you were in too much pain to go on the coastal walk we did, but otherwise you were OK."