Your bleeding is most likely due to your not having ovulated during the month before this "period" started. When it comes to female hormones, everyone thinks of estrogen. But the hormone progesterone is equally important. Progesterone causes your period to start and makes your uterine lining shed completely within a few days. But to make progesterone, you have to ovulate. No egg release, no progesterone. The result is the long, heavy bleeding you have experienced. Because of this bleeding, your uterine cavity literally fills up with blood and the blood coagulates. Then your uterus literally labors -- contracts until it "delivers" the clot. That's the pain. I don't think that a once-a-day regimen of birth control pills is going to control your issue very quickly. I would prefer to give you rather large amounts of progesterone and estradiol in a tapering fashion over 26 days, after which you would hopefully have a more normal period. You could start OCP's on about the fourth day of that. If you want exact amounts of the estrogen/progesterone "rescue kit" I would prefer, let me know. I am assuming (but you must be sure) that you are neither pregnant, infected, or on anticoagulant drugs. Also, you sound as if this bleeding is unusual for you. If you chronically skip periods and/ or have heavy bleeding, take a rescue regimen to control this episode, then get on birth control pills and stay onthem.

Kathryn B. Einhaus