Jennifer Lynne has hemophilia B and lives in Florida. She reflects on an important lesson that she learned the hard way when trying to figure out the cause of a confusing bleed.

So I was on vacation with my family, and we were in Reno, Nevada, and I had had a procedure on my cervix done about five days before. And the doctor said, “Don’t worry, you’re not going to bleed. Nobody ever bleeds.” And I believed him, which I know now, always check with the hematologist, like, don’t let anybody touch you without checking. But I wanted to get the procedure over with, so I just went ahead and had it done.

Well, five days later, I was on my way to Reno and I started bleeding. And my aunt, who’s a nurse, kept saying, “Oh, it’s your period.” You know, “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. You’ll be fine.” So I kind of went along with that because my periods weren’t very regular. But after a couple of days, it became apparent to me that this wasn’t my period.

We were in a casino and the bathroom was at the top of these stairs. And I would go to the bathroom — like tampons, pads, all the protection. By the time I walked down the stairs, I already had bled through what I had to stop the bleeding. So I would run back up the stairs, do it all again.

At that time, they sold tampons and pads in those vending machines. So I was, like, buying them like crazy. And then I would go back down the stairs and bleed through again. And this happened like four or five times. I kept running up and down stairs, till finally I was at the point, like, “I have to get to a hospital.”

So I found my aunt. She was at a slot machine, like near the bottom of the stairs, and I said, “I’ve got to go to the hospital.” And she said, “But it’s just your period.” And then she looked at me, and by that time, like I had blood halfway down to my knees, and then she got on board. Then she was like, “OK, we gotta get to the hospital.”

So we found my mom. My mom looks at me. The first thing she says is, “Why don’t you go change your clothes?” And I’m like, “Nope, we don’t have time for that either. We gotta go.” So we ended up, like, finding a cab and my aunt was thinking very clearly. She told the cab driver to take us to the largest hospital in the area.

So we did that, and as soon as I got into the hospital, the waiting room was packed. But as soon as they saw me, it was like a ticket to the front of the line and they got me in right away. And I spent a couple days in the hospital, but I ended up being treated and I ended up fine.

I think the life hack for that was probably I should have trusted my intuition when I thought something was wrong, instead of going along with, “It’s just your period.”