It's been some of the hottest weather in recent history here in the Twin Cities, and my 40 year old air conditioner decided it had had enough and checked out once and for all. For 3 weeks I closed up the house during the hot hours and opened all the windows and turned on the fans during the "cooler" hours..."cooler" being relative in this case. I also purchased 2 new fans to join my existing 3 fans in blowing around the hot air.
Just moving around our house during July was enough to cause me to break out in a sweat, never mind turning on the oven or trying to run the clothes dryer or dishwasher. Even having the lights on would bring the temperature into the high 80's. It's no surprise with all that heat figuring out what was "hot hot" and what was "hot flash" was nearly impossible. So, in my heat induced haze, I blamed everything on the temperature and figured the frequency of hot flashes was slowing down. Alas, a few hours after the new AC was installed the house cooled down to a more comfortable temperature... I, on the other hand, did not.
Men-o-pause.
My mother's generation called it "the change of life". Those were the days when the stork delivered babies, cancer was called "the big C", and there was a long list of things, most things of substance really, that you just didn't discuss in polite, let alone mixed, company.
But in this day of Viagra commercials, and recurring ads for hormone replacement therapy ("it's not just for women anymore"), I figured talking about menopause was fair game. And to be honest, since half of the population is going to experience it first hand, and the other half is going to live with the "second hand smoke" of it, it's probably a good topic to put out there... so out there it goes.
To start, let me just say menopause would really suck if chemo hadn't set such a high standard for suckiness. But chemo has set the standard, and chemo launched me head over tail into menopause. And, what chemo started, the hysterectomy wrapped up in a tidy little package with a great big ugly bow on the top. Whoever said good things come in small packages never met my ovaries. Handy little buggers when you want to get pregnant, but time bombs when you have BRCA gene. So out they went, and in settled menopause.
To be fair, at my age... a robust 48 years old...I was driving in the menopause express lane anyway. But through the miracle of chemo meds - viola - menopause on speed; and there's probably something to be said for moving through the "peri" stage quickly. Many women trudge through "the change" for years, and the journey can be more irritating than political ads in October.
"The change" - what a phrase; like we're stepping into the fitting room at Neiman Marcus and coming out with a whole new outfit. Not quite that easy. Yet in some ways, maybe not that far off, either.
For many women, menopause can be the trigger for a fresh perspective on life. It can be the impetus for getting in shape, getting healthy - mentally and physically, and coming into not only an acceptance but an appreciation for the person they've become. I think the challenges that menopause brings physically and emotionally either knock you on your tail or force you to push back and become stronger.
Most women seem to gain weight once they've gone through menopause - and I can see why. Your metabolism grinds to a halt and your emotions are in an upheaval. Ben and Jerry become regular guests in your kitchen - their visits short but frequent. And while a Hallmark commercial can send you leaping for the kleenex, there are often times when you could and do cry for absolutely no reason at all. All this gets you to thinking that you must be going crazy, or maybe you're depressed - but you can't think of any reason why you would be depressed - so you must be crazy.
But you're not.
What you are is menopausal. Your hormones are going up and down like the stock market during an election year. Meanwhile Pfizer is pushing viagra and the TV ads are telling you that hormone replacement therapy will put the bounce back in your boudoir, but all you really want is a good night's sleep, a whole 8 hours without night sweats, or waking up at 1am... and 3am... and 5am, because being emotionally charged for the last 24 hours is exhausting. But what's really exhausting is keeping your cool and pretending like everything is perfectly normal while you're sweating like John Candy one minute and shivering as if hell froze over and you're in it the next; because while menopause sucks, being treated like an overly emotional woman who's about to explode is even worse.
So you're crying and gaining weight and you go into your doctor and she says "let's get a bone density baseline" and you do, and you find out that despite the pints of ice cream being succumbed to on a regular basis you're not getting enough calcium and it's time to start popping calcium pills, with vitamin D, and magnesium, and take a couple of B-complex while you're at it for the stress and don't forget the iron and probably a multi-vitamin too, because in order to get the nutrition you need you'd have to eat something in the vicinity of 2500 calories, but you're only burning 1000 every day because your metabolism has taken the slow boat to your hips to meet up with Ben and Jerry who have settled there indefinitely.
Ahhhhhhhhh...
And then you realize that exercise is the key- and the great thing is that exercise is actually key to a whole lot of things, like managing stress, and keeping a healthy weight both of which will reduce your risk of getting cancer, and those are all good things.
So you exercise and you become stronger physically and mentally, and the menopause symptoms come less and less until one day you look in the mirror and you don't see a 17 year old girl who's gotten really old, you see you. Older, wiser and better for the living. A few wrinkles, maybe some gray hair, but a whole lot of life left in you and a whole lot of will to go out and live it.
Menopause is not life-on-pause, it's life. And if you are lucky enough to live long enough to go through it, then you are truly lucky in life.
