This was the view outside the balcony where I spent four nights a couple of weeks ago. Pretty, right? The bay of Naples, Mount Vesuvius, the classic Mediterranean pine tree. Except I didn’t really get to enjoy it very much because I spent most of the time laying in my hospital bed.
Yep. You may or may not have noticed that I had dropped off the map for the past month. No new posts or tutorials, no newsletters, very few erratic social media posts. Basically I spent three weeks in bed with an extremely heavy and long period that made me lose so much blood that I couldn’t stand up without blacking out. In the hospital I got a D&C, two blood transfusions and a bunch of IV treatments. And, even though I felt much better when I got back home, I continued to feel very weak and tired, and my hospital souvenir, phlebitis, had left my arm swollen, in pain and basically useless.
I honestly wasn’t sure if I wanted to write this post, but I decided to in order to potentially help other ladies out. First of all because I’ve never written a post about how incredibly amazing the menstrual cup is, and it really helped me deal with the hemorrhaging and also allowed me to know just how much blood I was losing, which was important information to give to my doctor. And second, because it is so, SO important to listen to your body and not just believe blindly what a doctor tells you if your instinct tells you otherwise.
If you don’t like reading or thinking about blood and/or women’s gynecological health, please just skip this post and come back next week for one of my non-body-related DIY tutorials. If you would like to hear my story and why I decided to write this post, keep on reading!