Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Women at Work

Warning: If words like women's period makes you squirm, you might want to skip this post!

Of all the things that get discussed about women at work, why have I never seen discussion on what we have to go through to work through our periods? 

Most women I know cant work atleast for few hours of their period time.

My own body took a long long time to get used to chums. Atleast thats what it looked like to me. There was a lot of puking at the onset of my chums for many years well into even my grad school days. My room mates then thought I was going to die. After the saga (of puking of course), I have to have some food and sleep. Imagine being at work at the onset.

I was interning those days and this one time I had taken all the care to go to a bathroom in 'unoccupied' first floor and puked my guts out. Moment I returned  to my cube in the second floor, one look at my face  my colleague(male  - that place was 95% male!) asked if I should be taken to the hospital -  I looked that sick.

 Those days, I had some vague notions of hiding the fact I had my chums  and act all normal. I dont believe that anymore  - I mean 3.5 billion people suffer through this monthly for a major portion of the life  - so why hide it? It is another matter but I still hide it or use the brahmastram of stomach ache.

Sometimes a bit of dysentry, stomach ache, utter discomfort and physical weakness and so on. Atleast in my case it has gotten better with age. Myraid problems, Varying from woman to woman. I  know of some women who are lucky enough not to go through major discomfort.

But the general talk with other women at work during these times reveal most of them do feel physically horrible - Sufferings strong enough to disrupt work. And this happens on a monthly basis. 

How come we have never seen any discussion on this?

Ps: it wasnt easy writing this post!

8 comments:

  1. Probably everyone is constantly offended by the oversimplified sanitary napkins ads!

    PS
    With the disclaimer I thought one long post is coming!

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  2. I second both points made my Gradwolf.

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  3. Adithya: I have updated the post.
    I didnt get what napkin ads has to do with what I discussed here.

    LG: Strangely enough you got what aditya meant :) enough to second them!

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  4. Sachita,
    You left out the hormonal imbalance it creates which also contributes to emotional side of things adding to the physical side. Imagine women with travelling jobs!

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  5. SK: True. I think I described mostly my experience.

    It does makes ineffectual for atleast a day and gives real tough time for two days!

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  6. Sachita, I thought I understood Gradwolf, but now that you mention, maybe I understood wrong !

    Incidentally,I wrote a long(ish) post on pms some time back. Read at your leisure.

    The post is here: http://babblogue.wordpress.com/2011/06/29/pms/

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  7. TELL ME ABOUT IT!! The emotional side gets weaker & weepy too !! Came back from India couple of days back and with PMS added to the fray, I am a weepy mess! :)

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  8. LG:wow. i just glanced it(& bookmarked it for reading later) but realized i have suffered through most in the list at some point or the other!
    Btw, it isnt just PMS - it is MS that is a bigger problem :)

    Shoba: that is horrible, i can totally understand. The cycle is such that you cant escape it in a india trip!

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