Cramp grips my guts with Schwarzenegger-in-his-weight-lifting-prime hands, squeezing tighter and tighter, forcing the blood out at a rate reserved for an arterial bleed. My pulse has broken into a sprint; my heart is dancing a jig and the temperature of my body races to dizzying heights.
Throwing back the doona and furry blanket like thirsty Aussie blokes with cold beer, peeling socks off as quickly as professional chefs skin potatoes; the flannelette pyjama top (my favourite green ones with purple puppies) is unbuttoned and thrown to the floor as if on fire, and menstrual blood gushes out of me like being in me is the last place on earth it wants to be. Well, hear hear blood! Hear hear! Arny squeezes tighter, juicing me like a ripe orange. A blood orange. Fork!
I walk with my legs clenched firmly together, taking tiny steps, bent at the waist, hands rubbing stomach. Where did I put the ibuprofen? Where did I put the pads? Where am I? Why can’t I see anything? Woken up by my traitorous body with such suddenness in the very early hours of the morning, I forget I am staying with my sister on the Sunshine Coast, sleeping in my niece’s room, my belongings in bags and a suitcase against the wall, which I promptly walk into. Memory restored. Let there be light.
A pad is grabbed as though it’s a raft and I’m shipwrecked on a deserted bloody island. Boy, do you have your work cut out for you my super slim wing-ed pink friend! We make our way to the toilet. I turn the light on and look down, expecting to see a scene from the ‘Cannibal Holocaust’ movie. Nothing. No rivers of red contrasting against the green of my puppy PJs. No big, fat, juicy, leech-like clots oozing down my ankles. What the hell Schwarzy? Then, I pull down my pyjama bottoms and undies and sit on the toilet. Hasta forking la vista Baby! Armageddon in my Bonds.
Periods in your fifties are like a box of chocolates; you never know what you’re going to get but you know it’s going to taste like shite because you ate all the nice chocolates in the period pre-cursor to the period. Just when you think it’s safe to go back in the water, you leave a blood trail so long and pungent sharks nudge each other, wink and congratulate themselves on not having to work hard today.
Bloody hell! Exactly! We are talking blood flood … of biblical proportions (not that the bible would give any insight on the subject of death by menstrual bleed, it was written by a bunch of blokes – even if they did wear dresses). Blood all over the crutch of my undies with dotted blood ellipsis intimating ‘but wait, there’s more’. And … there is. Up the back of my Bonds. Up the back of my puppy pyjamas. Between my butt cheeks. Up my back. How does that even happen? Flashbacks of changing ripe green, lumpy crap-filled nappies with pooh escaping from the rear exit and the fruitlessness of asking that same question. With a bucket load of self-pity, I clean myself up as best I can with toilet paper. It’s okay, I tell myself, just put on a clean pair of undies and sleep in those and a t-shirt; you’re too hot to wear pyjamas anyway, despite the temperature being six degrees Celsius.
That is when I remember … I washed all my clothes earlier in the evening, before drinking too much of whatever that fizzy pink wine was. I have no clean, dry undies. FORK! FORK AND KNIFE! FORK AND KNIFE AND SPOON! Then I think to myself; if this is what you’ve done to yourself, what is the bed going to look like? Fork, fork, fork! With disgust, loathing, gagging and zero dignity, I stick the pad on the blood soaked Bonds. Could this get any worse? Ah, yep!
Move over Francis F. Coppola, there is a bloody menstrual woman entering stage left who eats horse for breakfast. (Gag: no she doesn’t! I know, it’s a little creative licence. Did you do a test for that? For what? For the creative licence? No – accompanied by a withering stare …) The crisp white Egyptian cotton sheets, which can count to 1,000, will never be the same; ever, ever again.
(Yes they will: Sards is great. Shut up. Oh, okay.) In my blood stained undies and with the pad with wings (as useless as the flightless emu’s) laying between me and the great gush of the twenty-first century, – absolute faith is placed in the branding offering security and confidence for the next few minutes, hopefully five – I strip the bed.
Knowing full well that no amount of praying, luck and wishful thinking will alleviate the fact that the massacre-worthy amount of blood will have seeped through the sheet (which can count to 1,000), onto the mattress protector (which should be renamed), onto the mattress: I pray for luck as I wishfully think, ‘Gee, I hope it hasn’t gone through,’ and begin to peel back the doona. OH MY PURPLE PUPPIES! Where the forklift truck is the ibuprofen?
This is proving to be a costly exercise. The government officials who decided to add GST to sanitary products rub their hands together, gleeful with their genius and thankful for their penises. New undies, new Egyptian cotton counting sheets, new mattress non-protector, new mattress, new puppy pjs, more pads with big-arsed butt crack covering wings. (Just purchase incontinence pads – undies and pads in one, more economical, and you can get the ones that won’t give you visible panty line. Bugger off. Oh, okay.)
What do you do when you are weak from lose of blood, exhausted from Arny mincing your guts to steak tartare, fed up with hearing the verbal diarrhoea oozing from your inner voice, hung-over from drinking too much pink bubbly stuff, tired as it is the middle of the night and traumatised by the carnage? You say ‘stuff it’, down two ibuprofen which could no longer avoid detection, climb into bed, pull the doona and furry blanket over yourself and promptly go to sleep. (Fork! I’m fifty!)