Could I end up dead next time the river runs red?

To my dismay this morning, my body woke me up over an hour before schedule with a throbbing headache and blocked sinuses. I bumped around in the dark trying to find my slippers and dressing gown(yes, you are not mistaken), desperately avoiding too much movement of my head eventually making my way to an extra long hot shower to get the soothing started. After all necessary non-medicated interventions were exhausted, I realised that my headache (hence forth called 'Janet' on account of it being highly irritating, and sums up the physical feeling that I get whenever Janet from Friends has talked for too long in an episode), was here to stay indefinately, and did not hesitate to reach for the medicine cabinet.

Little background on my medicine cabinet, it consists entirely of the following medications; ibuprofen, paracetamol, meclofenac, gaviscon and ranitidine, all of which are at there maximum prescription concentrations. As you may have noticed; three are painkillers, the other two are to prevent gastritis (aka, so that I can take even more of the first three without getting that unwelcome epigastric burning sensation and nausea)

Imagine my horror on opening said cabinet, to find that this week ALONE, I have used up two whole packets of 500mg paracetamol, and have none left. Unfortunately for me ibuprofen and meclofenac are pretty useless for flu-type headaches....so in otherwords, I was screwed and Janet has been plaguing me ever since. Houston...we have a problem!

The reason for such extensive usage of analgesics is, as the title of this blog suggests, exquisitly painful periods...now some people may have problematic periods and some may not, and I am not trying to one up anyone on their experiences, but in recent years, the pain has become intolerable, so much so that I become incapacitated to move (at best). This isn't some lame excuse as to why I have to be lie in bed 2 days every month, I genuinely become physically sick(plus, its always comes on the weekend...Sod's Law). Other symptoms include(GRUESOME ALERT!); nausea, vomitting, diarrhoea, headache, fever and uncontrollable shaking....just to name a few.
Thats enough moaning... Basically because of this, I have a very low threshold to reaching for my trusty cabinet and popping my most successful cocktail yet; gaviscon, 3x500mg paracetamol, later ranitidine, followed by ibuprofen (just one) an hour later, and two hours later there is more 500mg paracetamol......and this will continue, until either the pain subsides, or the analgesic cocktail overrides my anti-gastritis precautions and then both pains coincide (which as you can imagine is pretty awesome)...then I normally pass out.

My time of the month is actually one of the only times (except of course, since I have been acquainted with Janet) that I actively encourage myself to indulge in painkillers. Merely the sheer quantity of analgesics over the two day time period that I normally am affected is enough to raise a few eyebrows, and being a Medical Student in my final years, I really should know better, let alone devising cocktails of drugs to allow me to take even more....it is a cardinal sin.
On top of the drug indulgence, I have usually been drinking the night before I come on (theoretically this is when I am most relaxed), thus placing my liver in an already compromised state before I even get cracking with the known toxicities of paracetamol. This stuff is what suicides are made of, and the thought is actually quite daunting.

Many celebrities in the last few years have suffered at the hands of prescription analgesics(whether accidental or not); my beloved Heath Ledger(we'll meet again someday), Michael Jackson, and Brittany Murphy are just a handful of those on the analgesic hit-list. Granted, they may not have popped they cloggs on paracetamol and ibuprofen alone, but others certainly have, and good ole 'molly only leads to stronger things.
Do I have a death wish? Absolutely not, but I'm certainly teetering with the dice of danger and temptation. So what can I do? I can't take nothing....well I could....but I would be very VERY ill.
Instead, I seek to take a hit at the heart of the problem, instead of just treating the side effects...I am to succomb to the evils of suppressing my hypothalamic-pituitary-ovarian axis through systemic hormone treatment, aka long-acting contraception...wish me luck and future fertility

You may be pleased to note that since my revelation, I have not yet renewed my medicine cabinet. Janet will just have to be filtered out like background noise (maybe just for another hour...I think I have lemsip somewhere)

Damn it Janet!!