I would like to stop hurting now, please.

[baratron]

I took painkillers an hour ago. They are failing to kill pain. Ouch.

I've been taking a painkiller called Veganin for years. It's the only thing I've ever found that touches period pain. It used to be a combination of paracetamol, codeine and aspirin - but they recently changed the formulation, and now it's just paracetamol and codeine with caffeine. Which I can't use. Great. So I just took Boots' own brand paracetamol and codeine, and it's doing nothing.

Comments

Um

[alexmc.livejournal.com]

Hugs (gently)

for whatever good that will do.

Veganin is a painkiller for Vegans? You are allergic to Caffeine? Doesn't aspirin cause blood vessels to dilate, and is that what you want right now?

Sorry I'm just an ignorant bloke.

No need to remain ignorant!

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I have no idea why Veganin is so-called - it can't possibly be vegan, as (like 75-80% of medicines) it uses lactose as the base for the tablets. I always bought it because it had three different painkillers in, one from each of the groups, which meant it was ideal for period pain - aspirin for the abdominal cramps, paracetamol for the leg aches and codeine for migraine. Now it's just paracetamol and codeine with caffeine, which is nothing special.

Yes, I am horribly sensitive to caffeine. I don't know if it's an allergy - but it gives me migraine, and in large doses, blackouts and fits. I am not epileptic, I only have fits if I have too much caffeine. I don't know how much "too much" is, but a tiny (150 ml) can of Dr Pepper is enough to make me seriously spaced out and unable to walk in a straight line. The last time I drank as much as a whole can of Coke was in my first year of university, and I spent the rest of the afternoon hallucinating. My lecture notes were written in huge loopy writing that bears no resemblance to my usual writing, and didn't make a lot of sense. I probably still have them around somewhere.

Don't think aspirin causes blood vessels to dilate, but even if it did, that bears no relation to menstruation. The blood loss in a period is nothing like the blood we lose after an injury - for a start, there is no injury that needs to be healed, no coagulation of platelets (scab formation), and the body does not go into shock. The blood loss itself is not painful, just irritating (I spend the first 2 or 3 days of a period feeling like I need to pee all the time) - it is the abdominal muscle cramping that hurts. I also get terribly heavy, aching legs for at least the first 12 hours, but I don't know if this is something most women get, or if it's just my usual leg problem making itself known because all of my anti-pain stuff is going into dealing with tummy pains.

Hope this helps - do let me know if you want to know anything else :)