Let’s Talk – Day 5

This week is National Women’s Health Week.  Their slogan is “Let’s talk!” and their logo is a delightful pink elephant in the room.  This week, I’m getting us talking about periods with an engineering spin.   Have a look at yesterday’s post to get up to speed.

 

We will continue to use the Engineering Hierarchy of Controls to examine this topic each day of this week.

 

Just a note that some of the health and medical things discussed here aren’t the right solution for every one and your doctor might have some really good reasons why it won’t work for you (like, you might have a stroke), so treat this information as if it were a casual gossip with a girlfriend and not tailored medical advice.

 

Today we’re up to Personal Protective Equipment.

 

Personal Protective Equipment

 

Interestingly, I was introduced to the concept of the Lily Cup by a male engineer who was surprised that I hadn’t realised they were made of flexible material.  (The one doco I’d seen featuring one, made me think it was like one of those cheap plastic medicine cups.  Those edges!  No thanks!)  But, now I know they’re made of comfortable medical grade silicone, I’ve found them LIFE CHANGING!  If the idea doesn’t make you squirm, it’s an awesome way of saving money and the environment, and not dealing with external protection methods (see Day 2), which personally make me squirm.

 

I just used my own woman’s intuition to decide that Lily Cup was the best choice financially.  But knowing that you ladies are the empirical, evidenced-based kind, I did some calcs.  And it turns out that based on my previous consumption of consumable feminine hygiene products (one pack of tampons and half a pack of pads a month) the paypack period for the Lily Cup is only 5 cycles.  And the net present value over 18 months is a whopping $224!

So as I tell every woman of reproductive capacity that I meet, Lily Cups are the best thing ever!

 

Your white knickers, the environment and your wallet, protected!

 

 

We hope you enjoyed National Women’s Health Week and that you learned something new, started a conversation you wouldn’t otherwise have had, or just liked looking at pink cartoon elephants that weren’t the nightmarish Disney hallucination kind!

As always, we’d love to hear what you think about this or any other issues faced by women and/or engineers so “Let’s talk!”