Menstruation and Examinations

The examination period is fast approaching. If you are one of those who suffer from menstrual problems likely to interfere with examination performance make an appointment to sec your doctor now. There are a number of means available to help sufferers of premenstrual symptoms, heavy periods and period pain. Sometimes the most practical solution is to alter the timing of menstruation, advancing it or postponing it to avoid an unwelcome clash. But if this is the help you need act now. Leaving it loo late reduces the number of available options. Come to Student Health and discuss your period planning.

To those who suffer and for anyone interested in reading more about menstrual problems, Fontana paperbacks have published Once A Month by Katherine Dalton, the UK doctor who has pioneered much of the work on this Cinderella subject.

In 1968 the Lancet published the first reported study by Dr Dalton on "Menstruation and Examinations". This clearly showed that menstrual problems impaired examination performance by approximately 5%.

Confessin the Menstrual Blues

Got the blues this Friday mornin'
Was blue as blue could be
An it wasn't love or money
No, they call it P.M.T.

Menstruation...yeah I got them
Premenstrual Blues
My nerves feel like a tightrope and my feet don't
seem to fit my shoes.

Well I went to sec my doctor
An I asked her what to do
She says, Honey that ain't nothing
Why I get it worse than you.

Oh yes child, there's some sisters get it bad
If all you got is nerves, well honey you should
be glad

When I finally started bleeding
I was in my baby's bed
Lord he looked at me so funny'
When he found his sheet was red.

I says Honey, why, you look like it was news
He'd got them unclean touch-me-not
blood-on-the-bedsheet blues.

Now a man he have the smegma
Lord, his armpits never clean
His asshole brown and funky
Girls, you all know what I mean
But all night he'll keep you waiting
If he catch you menstruation
Aint no chance of fornication...
Just you watch his face turn green.

No sisters, why he'd rather pull his pud
Yeah, he's scared to touch his woman,
says that blood won't do him no good.

Lord, I love that blood on Monday
Cause it says I aint with child
But from Tuesday up to Sunday
Its enough to drive you wild.

Oh Lordy, got a body I can't use
Got those am-I-sticky an I've-run-out-of-
Tampax-blues.

Now it ain't no degradation
To have the menstruation
Ain't no humiliation
To bleed from time to time
But we could not mention bleedin
While my Poppa was a-feedin
No, not even when he's readin
Why you'd think it was a crime

Yes Daddy, why d'you have to be so mean?
Why. I'm just a normal woman,.
I ain't do anything unclean.

Stephanie Smolenski.