Abnormal period?

My period was due on Tuesday the first. Friday night I noticed some brown discharge with a tinge of red and put a tampon in. I woke up in the middle of the night with the worst cramps I've had in years. Didn't sleep very well went to work and ended up going home from work sick. A few hours later I was laying down and got up and felt like I was leaking. I bled through my underwear and my jeans (not just a little but quite a bit) and this was 3 hours after putting a super plus in. I've never bled through my clothes before. I changed everything out and put a pad on and two hours later I had to change my tampon again and thankfully had the pad on cause it went into that too. I started getting concerned cause I haven't had cramps like this since before I started bc when I was 15 and I've never had heavy bleeding like this. I googled "early period heavy bleeding" and had some websites say this could be symptoms of an early miscarriage. I hadn't taken a test cause I planned to take one Saturday morning but figured it was just a bad period. So now I don't know if It is a period or not? I woke up this morning with hardly anything. Has anyone had anything like this happen? Is it a cause for me to make a doctors appointment?  My last period was July 28th.