My Little Meno Pause

Barbara: Today I don’t have an in-depth issue I need to get off my chest, I don’t have an idea or a rant or a plea or a story for you. I just have my own little real-life experience and I want to share it with you. Mostly in the hopes that you will share your stories with me, or that in sharing our stories we’ll help our younger generation see that it ain’t so weird or scary or verboten to talk about this.

If you’re wondering why I use the adjective “little” in the same vicinity as “meno” (because how can a “meno”-anything be “little”??? Menopause means another life-changer, another milestone, another major turning point, right?). Well, I’ll tell you why. Right now at this moment, it feels little. It feels subtle and gentle and mostly like an unassuming thing behind me, politely tapping my shoulder to let me know it might be barreling by in a moment.

Okay, so here’s the scoop. I am 48 and I just missed my first period. Or rather it was 10 days late. Now I am totally accustomed to a short, robust cycle: every 25 days, announced with potent PMS (a foggy, vulnerable fatigue in my case), in and out with reliable predictability. To wait 10 days for it was a bit disconcerting. The 2 periods before that—while right on schedule—were milder forms of my usual. I feel … okay. By that I mean, I feel fine, but not as light and easygoing as I am used to. But that could be any number of things. That said, I am actually going through a really nice time right now, with my beloved daughters both home, with some very exciting work prospects developing steam, and with my sense of worth feeling pretty stable. For all intents and purposes, I should be feeling GREAT. But … but … to be honest, there’s this strange pervasive … melancholy? No … restlessness. Or … uncertainty. I don’t know if there’s a connection here, but I thought in fairness I should throw that truth into the pot and mix it around. I’m not scheduled for my regular doctor’s checkup for a couple of weeks. So what do I do in the meantime? I turn to you guys, of course!!

I have 2 massive “women and their bodies” type books sitting on my bedside table. But who has time right now to read a 600 page TOME? I just want a short and sweet discussion of what your own experiences have been like when you approached this stage of your lives (or when someone you love did). Is this a slow change? Or will it happen so fast I won’t know what hit me? Please, any words of wisdom, wile or comedy would be greatly appreciated!

Deb: Oh where to begin? You know my mind raced when I got this email. What do I tell her? How do I support her? And then I thought, you know it is soooooooooooooo individual, so different for each woman. But I will say this—my menopause was not good and not easy, but it was very fast—two intense years. Yes, I was sure I was losing my mind. Still. Yes, I was sure I was losing my mind.  And so I owned it and I worked it. But now, even wayyyyyy before now, it was a distant memory. I am available, my darling friend, for private coaching. Not only available, but sitting and awaiting your call. So let’s do it. In the meantime: “it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your fault, it’s not your....”

London Diary, Day One: Burnie McStuffy McPainie McPeesalot

Deb: I sent a private email to Barb and three other dear friends today about the glamourous saga of my take off and arrival in London. Barb dared to ask if I would do it as my first post. I have accepted the challenge. Please do not feel jealous of the jetset glamour and whirlwind adventures I am privy to. I cannot help it if my life is just that damn sweet and privileged.

It started two days before I left when I woke up with huge shooting pain in my lower back and a deaf ear. The ear was a result of wax buildup which I have developed since age 50. The fact that I poured cooking oil into it to soften it for my doctor to flush out didn’t help. As it turns out, there was so much wax the oil got trapped behind it and rendered me deaf. Not to mention the fact that I used (who knew) my husband’s expensive extra virgin olive oil.  I mean, who among us would not want to grab a little of the extra virgin, so long gone?! So my doctor flushed the wax out and, because of that fine expensive oil, the wax shot out, right past the medical robe and the metal ear bowl and onto my new pants. My doctor’s humourous response was, “At least it was YOUR wax.” She’s right. Thank heaven for small favours.

When I got home after the flushing I really had to pee and I went to the powder room and felt not relief, but searing burning pain. Phoned the doctor I had just left who told me (given that I was leaving the country) to come back up right away. The result as I suspected was a urinary tract infection, the first bout of which I had just had in August. The explanation for this reoccurrence had everything to do with my aging body parts and that darling of the female set: post-menopause. So she put me on Sulfa again, which when I took it in August made me gag and wretch. HORSE PILLS, I TELL YA!

At this point in the day, the pain in my back was so bad that I could barely stand, but my wonderful Chiropractor, the lovely Sasha, worked me over for a half hour! I got home to find that the treatment was not only wearing off, but that my buttocks were now covered in bruises as a result of the cure. I followed that up with a massage and now my butt is so sore that not only can I not sit down because of the internal pain, but I cannot sit down because of the external pain. Win win!

So, bless Sasha’s heart, she came in on Saturday, her day off, and worked me over again to little result. I think my back needed a break, but there was not time as we had to go for it. So ice heat ice heat ice heat muscle relaxers later, I was packing in slow-motion sporting a good Robaxiset buzz and a silly grin which was accompanied by nausea. I would start to pack toiletries and wonder, “How did I get on the floor playing “gimme it” with the dogs?” Add to that the fact that I woke up on the day of travel with a swollen bottom lip sporting a burgeoning cold sore. At this point I am staring into the mirror laughing my battered ass off. You gotta laugh.

The following excerpt is from the email I sent to aforementioned friends. The credit for the term “downstairs lady” should go to my brilliant and hilarious friend Teresa Pavlinek who has coined with this phrase a whimsical name for the female anatomy.

Dear Cheryl, Barb, Annette and Sheila,

So get to the airport and back is baaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaad.  Nausea from the Robaxiset is wearing off, but I am now in a full body sweat.

Limping along with a stiff upper lip, which is chapped and dry from the herpes meds, I manage to stumble to the Air Canada lounge and have a bite and a glass of wine to sooth my tummy. Then I take two Advil, which actually work quickly and quite well. Once on the plane I realize that although my back is better I am getting Colin's wretched cold BIG TIME, so stuffed up am I becoming.  So in no particular order, I take Tylenol, Coldfx, and of course Sulfa for my needy, burning downstairs lady.

I have a bite of food, watch a movie, take a nervie-dervie (sleeping pill for blog pepes who don’t know my vernacular) and sleep through to landing. Wake up having missed breakfast on the plane, driver picks us up and we get stuck in horrible traffic.

Hunger and dehydration nausea is building faster than a downtown condo. Get to the hotel which is beyond the beyond of chic, come up to the room, order breakfast, sit on the bed with Colin on the other side of the beautiful rose strewn dining table, eat perfect French toast until I feel my stomach is ready to accept the Sulfa pills to aid the woes of the “downstairs lady.”

Perched on the embroidered silk bedcover, I put the pill in my mouth, gag for all I'm worth and piss all over the bed. As I run screaming, gagging, laughing into the washroom, my husband follows me with a hand towel wiping clean the evidence.

HELLO London! The Clampetts have arrived.  

“Come and listen to a story ‘bout a gal named Deb,

A poor simple slut who just pissed a hotel bed.

She picks herself up, cause she's got nothing left to lose

And heads to the smart shops to buy her some shoes.”

***The following is the part that Annette, she of the great wit, added as response:

“So Deb sent an email to her friend named Annette

Who heard about the peeing and had to take herself to bed

Cause when she heard Jed singing about some bubbling crude...

Annette had no idea that it really was so ruuuudddee.

Pee that is ... Colin's knows...

Holding a towel ... away from his nose!”

JEALOUS YET????? I know, I know, I’m a jetsetter, what can I say? 

I Am So HOT In Bed

Barbara: It’s true. I am smokin’ hot in bed. Four-alarm. Off the charts. A real sizzler. Too bad my husband sleeps through the whole thing.

Now, I know you know I mean literally hot. Sweaty. Icky. (Although, I will say, I think I’m kinda the other kind of hot too, but that’s for another post … if you’re interested. Or if I’m in the mood.)

Anyway. I’m not yet in menopause or in the “peri” part of it … I don’t think. What do I know? I mean, I don’t have hot flashes or day sweats or any of the other stuff Deb has warned me about (bless her heart and curse her honesty). But lately I wake up night after night just uncomfortably hot. Of course, it probably doesn’t help that I’m under a down duvet that I am loathe to throw off. My inner little kid still likes the coziness and “safety” of a substantial cover over me. And to make matters worse, my dog likes to press himself against my legs, generating even more heat and effectively shutting off the only means of escape I have if I want to throw a leg out into the cool night air. And I don’t think my husband would appreciate me yanking off the covers on his side. I guess I can consider myself lucky that he isn’t a through-the-night-cuddler. Not like a friend of mine who when she went through menopause sweated so profusely every night she drenched the sheets, but who was determined not to disengage from her cuddly and strangely oblivious husband who had a habit of clinging onto her like she was his personal life raft. Even with my mild(er) case of midnight hotness, I can’t imagine it.

So I wake up night after night and blink hotly at the ceiling in abject wonder at my body. Must it always do all the things I have been warned it will do? Must it be so bloody (no innuendo intended) predictable? It really begs the question, would I prefer to be in ignorant bliss—ie, do I want to know nothing of aging and its changes and therefore not second-guess my sudden warmth and simply assume it is the weather, the bed, or my husband? Or do I prefer to be “in the know” and realize that, yeah, I’m hot, but there’s good reason for it and it’s normal and natural and in no way needs to interfere with any other more desirable kind of hotness?

Deb: As Barb’s official MenoYoda, I can say that indeed I have been there. Moons ago now. But I actually purchased pj’s made for menopausal women that absorbed the sweat. They didn’t work as I was too hot to wear them! 

I know the old expression goes: “Horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies feel the heat.” But during menopause, I was a Clydesdale with the big old furry feet, and even they were soaked with sweat. So the only consolation I can offer my dear friend is this: When you wake up during the night and your sheets are soaked, just be grateful it ain’t pee.

Barbara: Hallelujah, MenoYoda. Once again, you have shed the light!