Yolo-Ymk Chit Chat 2

A Tale From The Grave Yard

My name is Adjoa and I am sharing my story with you from the grave. Are you surprised? Please don’t be! Because like you, I was once alive!

I was the only girl among four brothers; the first time I told my parents I wanted to go school just like my brothers I was beaten like an armed robber. My mother sold kenkey in the evening so I helped her prepare and sold to our customers. Through this I found a friend who claimed to love me. I knew very little about love and I wanted to talk to my parents about it but I remembered my father’s reaction when he found out my brother had a girlfriend. He beat the hell out of him! But I liked my new friend; he gave me all the attention I never had from my parents and even from my siblings. He bought me nice gifts and oh! He was good looking too.

Six months after I accepted a proposal to be his girlfriend I started seeing some changes in my body. My breasts became very tender, I didn’t see my menses for about three months and I got tired easily too. I was not too sure what was happening to my body but my mother suspected I was pregnant. At that point I got confused. But the pregnancy was confirmed.

I had spoken to Afua, my friend about my situation who said she knew a woman who could help me get rid of the pregnancy. She took me to a woman whose specialty was to help young women abort pregnancies. I was shocked to see a lot of girls in a queue waiting to be attended to. After waiting for a while I was asked by the woman to come indoors. She then showed me a concoction made from substances I could recognize easily.

She then inserted the concoction into my vagina and it felt uncomfortable. She reassured me that everything was going be okay. Afua took me home and minutes later I began to bleed profusely. God! Please, please, help me. I cried! It didn’t take long for my mother to realize what was happening to me. She called for a taxi to transport me to the hospital after seeing the state I was in. I could hear my mother pleading with one of the nurses to save her only daughter’s life. But the nurse retorted I deserved every bit of my pain for attempting an abortion. Now I am in the grave together with my dream of becoming a doctor. I may have made a mistake by getting pregnant but I think I deserved better care from the health worker whose responsibility is to save lives.

You don’t have to die from an abortion! Are you pregnant and confused, have you missed your period?

Call 0302 689 617 or WhatsApp 020 580 2800 or log on to www.adhdghana.org to talk to a counsellor.

ADOLESCENTS AND DIABETES

I’m back again, talking about the monthly “red devil”, haha, I know that you now have a name for the flow. Does having diabetes make things different for you as you approach this point in your womanhood? Well, it does a bit, but nothing which is that much unusual. So your menses are supposed to come every month, or if we want to be more accurate every cycle. Now let us calculate how we can estimate how we can know when to expect “ante”. Let’s do some calendar work a bit, I know that you love maths,right…hahaha. I realise that between the last time I wrote to you and now, you have started to have your menses.

Alright, so your last period came on the 13th of January and the next one was on the 7th of February, then in March it was on the 4th then also on the 30th of the same month. Why all this? This is a bit confusing right, because you thought that you should have your menses on the same day every month and also once a month not twice a month like what happened in March. Wow that is 2 times in a month, what is happening?

I hope you get this calculation, so based on this, we can predict that your next period is going to be between 25-26 or even 27 days from the 31st of March…now do the calculation and see what day you would get. So based on this day you would be prepared for the next flow, so that is what is marked PURPLE and that of May predicted dates is marked BROWN. Not difficult, is it? As long as you have a diary or a calendar it’s very easy to figure it out.
How many days will the menses occur, well, it varies from 3 days to 7 days, anything more than 10 days continuous should be reported to mummy so that she’ll take us to the doctor. The amount of bleeding days does not mean much, so don’t think that because you bled 3 days this month and 7 days last month, it means that something is wrong.
Before I finish this letter let me teach you a few conditions which when they happen during your menses you should let mummy know……
Dysmenorrhea, this is the pain that you may get just before or during your period. It would be lower abdominal pain and some funny cramps. You can take some pain killers during this time, if it gets too painful let mummy know
Polymenorrhea this is when your cycle is less than 21 days, so in effect you will be having your menses more times than previously.
Metrorrhagia when your menses come at irregular times for more than 3 months and you bleed in between your expected times when your period is supposed to come.
Do you still have questions about the “red devil”…hahaha. If so kindly let me know.
Yours truly
LaDyC

M. Calendar

So even though you are counting it as monthly, you should rather be counting the days. Start counting from the 1st day of your menses to the next first day of your menses, this should give you the days in your cycle. So you count the number of days and expect the next period. So let’s do some counting from the 13th of January to 7th of February was….25 days in between right, then from 6th to the 4th of March was 26 days, then 4th of March to 31st of March was 26 days, meaning that even though your period occurred in the same month, the number of days in the cycle was what you expected.

Now does diabetes affect the timing of your period? Yes, if your blood sugar is poorly controlled and you get ill, your body protects itself by stopping the period from happening, now another cause of missed periods is PREGNANCY.

Do you know who pregnancy occurs, I know that the girls in class have been whispering somethings about sex and you have been curious. Please wait I’ll give you more details, for now just focus on your studies and let the boys come later in life otherwise Mummy will “kill” you oooo.

Please ignore the people who will sell drugs saying that they will make your period come plenty so that instead of 3 or 5 days you will have it for 7 days. I know this because Agya Kojo the medicine seller has been singing this song every morning by our house on his way to the market to sell his herbs.

Will your period cycle and number of days remain the same throughout your life time? No it will change and remember that illness and admissions in the hospital may cause some changes, so make sure that you try and keep your blood sugar levels as close to normal as possible, eat a healthy diet and exercise as much as you can.

Please make sure that you change your pads often during your menses, now talking about pads, there are so many on the market, see the one that you are comfortable with and use it. The days that your menses are heavy use the thicker ones and use the thinner ones when your menses are light. Mummy said that in her time they used to use cloth and had to wash it often, OMG yes ooo that was my expression ei hmmm thank God for advancement. There are these other things called tampons, cotton wool and recently I read about menstrual cups. The tampons are easy to use but a lot of people are not very comfortable with it. I heard Mercy saying the other day that her big sister said that if you use tampons, you would be breaking your virginity. Well let me tell you the truth it is not true. The tampons when fixed do not go and break you hymen (I have brought another word haahaha this is a thin sheet which lies in your cervix and would only get broken when you have sex with a boy, hahaaha don’t turn brown and black or green oooo, so once it is broken it means that you are no longer a virgin)