Menstrual problems at different stages in a woman’s life have to be coped with in very different surroundings. You may be at your office desk, standing at the sink at home, or working for an exam in the classroom when you develop a blinding headache or one of the other wretched symptoms we have been considering. Although some of the problems are obviously peculiar to the particular setting, the methods of dealing with them often apply to those that arise elsewhere. You may find some helpful advice even in the sections geared to stages and circumstances quite different from yours — some of the ways of coping with depression, work whether you’re fourteen years old or forty.
At work-When I started to think about this subject, I hardly knew where to begin, for nowadays over half the women in this country are out at work. The jobs they do are so varied and need so many different skills that if I were to deal with all the difficulties that can be caused by painful periods at work, I’d need to write a book and not a chapter. Nevertheless there are some general guidelines. Perhaps the most important of all are to do with safety.
Many women work in factories and workshops handling machinery which is hazardous at the best of times. If, on top of that, your period makes you clumsy and off-balance, you’re in very real danger of having an accident. Dr Dalton’s survey of four London hospitals showed that half the women admitted as emergencies were suffering from periods at the time they were admitted. And in the United States, the Center for Safety Education has discovered that most accidents to women occur in the forty-eight hours before their periods begin. Women are at risk at this time and so are the people they work with.
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