Feminine Issues

(Not sure how many readers this has, but this post pertains to, well, feminine issues, so if you don't want to hear about it, don't read it.)

When I complain about my period I feel like a horrible feminist. I know that I am supposed to love it because it makes me a woman (or some such bullshit), but I don’t. I will not pretend that I speak for all women, but my period is most definitely a curse.
I have dealt with this for eight years. Crippling pain caused me to miss school until I went on birth control (a point of contention between me and my mother, because in her mind the only reason to use birth control is to sleep around). Even with the aid of birth control lessening the pain and the flow, well, it’s still heavy and painful.
It’s the worst at night. I have the overnight pads, and they’re all but useless. I can lie on my back. And that’s it. If I lie on my side, it leaks, on my stomach, it leaks, if my underwear shifts at all while sleeping, it fucking leaks! Wings are out of the question, because they do not afford the adjustability I need to get it back far enough so that I can achieve that lying-on-my-back position. I’d have to sleep sitting up.
Tampons are, in my humble opinion, the worst torture device ever created. When I wear a tampon (as it sometimes helps to lessen the flow) I am uncomfortable, I cannot sit without being in pain, and I cannot walk without performing a slow, painful waddle. The only time I wear tampons is to avoid leaking on my clothes while I nap, and then I set an alarm for 3 hours (to the minute) from when I inserted the tampon. My mother’s doctor told her this was the maximum amount of time one should leave a tampon in for… as he discharged her from the hospital… where she had spent a week recovering from pelvic inflammatory disease caused by, you guessed it, leaving a tampon in too long. I’m not sure if you’re even supposed to wear them overnight, but I have just outlined every reason why that is absolutely out of the question.
So, short of a hysterectomy, I was at the crux of a dilemma that had haunted me for eight years: How do I get a decent night’s sleep while I’m bleeding so profusely that were it from any other part of my body I’d probably be in the hospital.
My answer was adult diapers. My grandmother (who I asked to buy them for me) laughed, outlining all the solutions presented above, which simply do not work. My logic was simple, nothing got inserted into my uterus, there was full absorbent protection on all possible sides, and I had some literal wiggle room. What my grandmother called weird, I called resourceful!
Well, when the time came to put my brilliant plan into action, I couldn’t go through with it. It just seemed too weird and too embarrassing, plus I didn’t even know what I was looking for. Pressed for time I went home frustrated and empty handed.
I’m still not sure what I’m going to do about this dilemma, other than suffer through 4-7 days of sleeplessness. Maybe I’ll get up the gall to go through with my brilliant plan, however that opens up the possibility that on enacting said plan it would turn out to be less than brilliant. I guess I won’t know til I try, if I try.