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When she was 16, Marjolein Robertson had a period that stopped and started, stopped and started again, then didn’t stop. “It picked up in pace and volume for days and days,” she says. “I remember talking to my friends about it, but we were all clueless.

I was changing my pad and my tampon every half-hour but I still thought: ‘It’s OK, it going to stop eventually.’ In my head, it was a sac of blood. It can only have so much volume.



” Her higher-English exam was approaching. Her mother said they’d get that out of the way then see a doctor – but on the night before the exam, the bleeding was too much. Her mum took her to their local hospital on Shetland.

“She thought they could give me something to stop the bleeding, then we’d go home so I could do my exam,” says Robertson. “We walked in, the doctor and nurse asked: ‘What’s wrong?’ and I started crying, saying I was having ‘a really bad period’. I think that was the first time I’d talked about it to a stranger.

” The medics rolled their eyes a little. The doctor took Robertson’s bloods, while the nurse chatted about horrible periods and wearing two pairs of pants – but when the doctor returned, his demeanour had changed. “He was speaking really fast and in jargon,” says Robertson, “and I didn’t understand, but my mam understood and said: ‘No, she’s coming home with me.

She has her English exam tomorrow.’ The doctor said: ‘If you take her home now, she won’t live throu.

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