There are a lot of women out there who have menstrual cycles. Generally, they talk about it amongst themselves. But sometimes menstruation becomes public! Like in Brittany Murphy's autopsy report, which, Us Weekly reports today, her husband has just read. (The magazine notes that he found reading it upsetting.) But women readers will note that there is some really intriguing menses-related information here.

Us quotes Murphy's husband, Simon Monjack: "Like all deaths, I go over and over and over it. She was dead within two hours of waking up, saying 'My chest is tight. I can't take a breath!' But that was part of her normal menstrual cycle. It was the perfect storm."

Her normal menstrual cycle?

"As someone whose conversations with other women are at least 40% about menstruation," said Rindley, probably an Aquarius, "I can honestly say I've never heard that one."

(40%? "The other 60% is about dicks," she explained.)

"Maybe she had PMS-related panic attacks," Rindley suggested. "I mean, to get serious, that could be what he meant. The hormones take over, they really do, it's nuts. I once cried for fifteen minutes over not being able to figure out a tool in Photoshop. Like deep wracking sobs."

I asked Laura, 34, if she experienced Brittany-Murphy-like menstruation. "No!" she said. "I mean I feel like I want to die sometimes, but that's for cramps-related reasons. But no, no chest-tightening at all."

"Also," Laura added, "Didn't she have a bunch of cold medicine in her system? AKA the stuff that my summer-of-96 roommates would often try to turn into speed?"

Laura noted, however, that "this speculation resembles a rumor that would have been passed around before those gender-segregated fifth-grade assemblies sponsored by the makers of various menstrual products more than anything."

I asked Vera, who is Jewish, the same question. "No NO NO NO," she said. "Just rage and hunger," she added.

"I mean I'm trying to think where he got this," she said. "Cause your boobs can hurt, sure. But not on the inside."

On the Internet, women often come together to discuss menstruation. According to an Internet website posting, yesterday, one woman admitted that "my period lasts 7-8 days, is painful, and is enormously heavy and messy. I routinely pass very large (think superball-sized, and larger) clots or masses of tissue-often multiple times in a day, and because of the clots I have intense cramping."

I sent that link to Rindley for her thoughts. "Eww!" she said.