Junior Hemani Kamarshi remembers walking into her final math test of eighth grade feeling confident, armed with hours of studying and her usual dose of Aleve for when she was on her period. Kamarshi, a participant in Kennedy Middle School’s hybrid learning program at the end of the 2020-21 school year, took the test in person, initially feeling assured in her ability to earn an A. But 10 minutes later, Kamarshi’s lower abdomen started cramping. She recalls struggling through her worsening period cramps as the pain compounded her stress, forcing her to work faster and take shortcuts when showing her work. Kamarshi ended up finishing the test in only half the allotted time, leaving immediately for the bathroom after she was done and breaking down when she got there.

Kamarshi explains that the severity of her periods affects many aspects of her life. As a result of her heavy periods, Kamarshi also experiences migraines, stomach aches, nausea and period cramps that frequently interfere with her academic performance, particularly on tests, as well as her social life.

“I used to miss school every month because my periods gave me a lot of migraines and stomach aches,” Kamarshi said. “I’ve gotten better at tracking my cycle, which made it easier to find out when to take painkillers, which has led to me missing school less. I also get a lot moodier and it’s sometimes hard to even have conversations with people. Because I’m part of a sports team, my performance also suffers when I’m on my period.”

Menstrual issues have also disrupted junior Rajeswari Kenyan’s track and field training. Kenyan notes that the quality of her workouts worsened dramatically before she stopped training altogether after she lost her period for 10 months at the end of 2022. When she lost her first period, Kenyan remembers brushing it off, as she previously underwent another medical procedure involving radiation, and was warned that it might affect her period. But six months later, as Kenyan intensified her training after the track and field season, she remembers her symptoms worsening, as she started experiencing physical repercussions in addition to challenges training.

“I think what prompted me to start a conversation with my doctor was my hair loss,” Kenyan said. “I would pull it and it would just come out. Around nine months into not having a period, I went to the doctor and they told me to decrease my training and increase food intake. I did that, but it was too little change to make a big difference, so I stopped training entirely and went on a 3,100-calorie diet. It took me around six weeks after when I stopped training to finally get a little spotting, not even a period.”

The first time Kenyan stepped onto the track after losing her period would be 13 weeks later. She recalls her return to sport as a frustratingly slow process — after three weeks of not training at all, she was allowed to participate in weight training three times a week. When she finally did return to running, she initially struggled to run one day a week.

Kenyan and Kamarshi both found themselves hesitant to talk about their periods, with Kamarshi often emailing teachers about “stomach aches” — a moniker she has used in place of telling her teachers about her period cramps. Despite people at MVHS generally being accommodating, she has found herself more anticipatory of how teachers, particularly male teachers, may react when she tells them about her periods.

“I know that some people will brush it off and say, ‘It’s not that bad’ or tell me to get over it,” Kamarshi said. “There are still some people who think that I should be able to go about my daily life and not let on that I’m in pain. I would like to do that if I were able to, but there are some people who I don’t think understand that about women’s issues in general.”

Sophomore Natalie Pham, who takes birth control, notes that everyone has a different experience when taking birth control; she experiences shorter and more predictable periods with lighter flow but worsened menstrual cramps, which have made it harder for her to focus in school. She has observed stigma around women’s bodies and sexual health, especially surrounding birth control, which is dismissed as “something for people who have sex.”

“I feel like a lot of people immediately think of sex when it comes to birth control,” Pham said. “But there’s a lot of reasons why people take it — birth control changes your hormones so it can help with acne and your period. When I’ve talked to my friends about it, I don’t think they even know that they have easy access to it, because you can just go to any Planned Parenthood and ask them for birth control.”

To alleviate some of the stigma surrounding periods and birth control, Pham proposes starting more conversations surrounding birth control as a form of period management. Kenyan, who found it hard to talk about her period, agrees that period talk must be normalized so that people can seek help. Kamarshi notes that the lack of conversation surrounding periods was far more apparent in elementary and middle school, where sex education courses did not adequately prepare her for her periods, in part due to going through her sex education course through distance learning due to the pandemic.

“There was supposed to be a sex education course at my elementary school, but they ended up scrapping it, which I think was quite detrimental for me and a lot of my friends who went to my elementary school,” Kamarshi said. “In middle school, I found the sex education curriculum woefully inadequate because of the pandemic, and I don’t blame anyone for that. But I remember having to learn about my periods much earlier than any health courses had taught me.”

Kamarshi says that many teachers have been willing to make arrangements with her to accommodate her period cramps, often offering to postpone assignments if she was not feeling well. Ironically, she notes, most of her male teachers were very understanding about it. Still, some of her female teachers told her that they couldn’t do anything about it and that she would just have to deal with the consequences if her periods interfered with her academics. But in general, Kamarshi says most teachers are very supportive, and the responsibility rests on students to ask for accommodations if they need it.

“I think some students are just so scared about what their teachers are going to say,” Kamarshi said. “Even if most teachers, from experience, wouldn’t say anything bad or would support students, students are still scared to talk to their teachers or seek help from anyone else. I don’t think teachers can do that much unless student perception about talking to teachers changes.”

Kenyan emphasizes the importance of seeking help when you need it, encouraging students to build a support system to help them. She notes that after telling her coaches that she lost her period, they encouraged her to see a medical professional to receive more assistance. At the same time, she hopes that people around her can start conversations about periods more often.

“Whether it’s coaches or parents or anyone else guiding you, I think they should bring up the topic of periods more often and not disregard any comments that athletes may make about it,” Kenyan said. “When I told my coach, she told me that I wasn’t taking as much action as I thought I was, and encouraged me to see a doctor with more medical experience, which helped me to actually fix the problem.”