Sunday, June 24, 2007

Excuse Me While I Melt The Sky

If you don't care to read about the trials and tribulations of late-middle-aged womanhood, skip this.

Thank-you
Shall we proceed?

I think I have less estrogen in my body these days than Arnold Schwarzenegger. He certainly has bigger breasts than I do, although that's not a medically-recognized test for estrogen levels.

Having hot flashes is, however, a general indication that those womanly hormones are running low. I've been having hot flashes for about seven years now. Seven years. Maybe longer. I'm not sure because another one of the side effects of menopause is memory loss.

Yes, there. I've said it. The "M" word. I hear that back in the old days (like three years ago or something), polite women didn't mention menopause. They went through it, they suffered in silence, or they went to the doctor, they got on hormones and all was well. Prescription estrogen made from the urine of pregnant mares flowed through their systems, bringing them relief from hot flashes, hair loss, memory loss, and so forth. Eternal youth thanks to pregnant horse piss!

Then they did a study which showed the women on these hormones suffered high rates of heart disease. Women were taken off hormones in droves. Some women (like me) never got on them. As anyone who's read my blog knows, I am not one to embrace technological answers to life's passages. I had three of my four kids at home. Now, if there had been some sort of complication in my pregnancies and births, I would have been in the hospital quicker than you can say internal fetal monitoring. However, there wasn't, and so I didn't go to the hospital and I was very happy with that decision. So when the "change" started to occur, I decided to just go with it. Let nature take her course. How bad could it be? My own mother never had a hot flash in her life. Probably all in the head, and all of that.

Yeah. Right.

I must take after my father's side of the family because as I said, I've been having hot flashes for over seven years now. Not the horrible ones that make you have to change your sheets at night, but they are certainly bad enough to wake me up sometimes as often as ten to twelve times a night to throw off my covers and lie there sweating, which I think is highly unfair, having finally gotten to the point where my kids (ages 18 to 31) all sleep through the night on their own, thank you very much. I also get them during the day. All day. I get them in yoga class, while I'm cooking, while I'm walking, while I'm eating, watching TV, writing, reading, driving in the car, taking a shower, talking to people...okay. You get the point. They frequently come during emotionally intense situations as well as in physically intense situations.

If you've never had a hot flash, they're hard to describe. Sort of like someone suddenly set your internal thermostat at 1098.6 rather than 98.6. But first, before the temperature change, I get a sudden feeling of complete and overwhelming despair and anxiety. What is wrong with me? I think. I must be going crazy! Or maybe the world is ending! Then I become insanely thirsty while at the same time I have a sudden urge to pee. A bad one. Sometimes I also feel as if I don't eat something right that second, I'll die. My stomach clutches in emptiness and that blood-sugar-hittin'-the-floor feeling comes over me. And THEN, I start to feel as if someone had thrust me into a blast oven.
Oh yeah, I think. I'm having a hot flash.

You'd think after seven years of this, I'd have a clue when I get the feeling of despair, but no, it always comes as a shock, the whole entire sequence of events.
It's just the weirdest darn thing.

So I've tried all the "natural" remedies. Soy, plant estrogens, Chinese herbs, exercise, flax seed, thinking cooling thoughts, etc. Alcohol and caffeine are supposed to exacerbate the situation but I don't generally drink during the week and have noticed no relief Monday through Thursday and I will probably never give up caffeine so let's not even discuss that.

Honestly, nothing seems to help except hand fans, which I keep stashed in every room of the house, the car and in my purse. There's a certain sound I make when I'm about to have a hot flash. My family knows this sound and, bless their hearts, start immediately searching for the nearest fan to hand me. Then I flail the fan as fast as I can while simultaneously ripping whatever clothing I can spare off my body. Pretty sight. Also, my skin turns red, especially in the upper areas and sweat begins to pour off my body.

My doctor, trying to be reassuring, told me that only fifteen percent of women have hot flashes into their eighties. This is reassuring? I mean, how many women make it into their eighties to begin with? I had no idea until she said this that there was even the vaguest possibility that these moments in hell could last forever. Now I know they can and IT DOESN'T HELP.

What I really wonder is how women managed to get through menopause without killing themselves, their husbands, children, or random strangers before air conditioning. I think about the women who lived in this house back in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and all the clothes they had to wear and all the work they had to do. I garden, but if I don't get a crop in, no one starves and I don't have to wear flannel underwear in August while I'm hoeing. I have water at the turn of a tap. I don't have to haul it or chop or haul wood. I don't have to milk the cows or take them out to the pasture. I don't have to make preserves or can food and if I do choose to, it's not over a fire and I can turn down the AC while I'm doing it. I don't have to make my own soap, walk to the store or wash my clothes by hand in water that I hauled, heated on a woodfire, and then poured into a washtub. I don't have fourteen children.
But women, back when this house was built, did.

Actually, I have a theory that women aren't supposed to go through menopause at all. We were supposed to die in childbirth with our seventeenth or eighteenth child. The women who survived having all those kids and who made it to their fifties were tough old birds. Tougher than John Wayne ever was, I'll tell you that. They didn't need no stinkin' hormones.

And speaking of hormones, I just heard that the most recent, recent study disproves the whole heart disease hormone connection. In fact, hormones may even protect the heart.

What the fuck???!!!

At this point, I think I'm just going to trust my instincts and try to tough it out like those women of old. So if you see a woman in the grocery store, turning scarlet and perspiring like she's just lifted a burning car off a child, it might be me. Or it might be some other woman who is going through menopause.

Be kind to her. And by be kind, I mean, ignore her. Try not to stare if she suddenly takes off her blouse in front of the canned vegetables or runs to the frozen foods section and sticks her head in the ice cream freezer. Just know that she is using more restraint than most of us will ever know in simply not screaming her lungs out in frustration.

I actually have another theory which is that all us baby boomer women having hot flashes is contributing in no small way to global warming. So maybe, if I went on hormones, I would actually be doing the planet a favor?

I'll think about that.

7 comments:

  1. OK. I'm new. New to your blog, that is, but not to hot flashes. I never did break down and take hormones and now (and I'm sure I've got a few years on you) I only get them when I'm REALLY angry. No, it's not anger, exactly, but a special type of emotional conflict that I wasn't even really aware that I felt until I started flashing and one day it hit me that doctors might not know what causes them, but women do -- and by and large it's being asked or expected to do something other than go lie down in an air conditioned room or whatever other pleasant experience we had in mind instead.

    By the way, my son in Tally who blogs found your son son's blog. He's kind of "off" on his blog this month since work is taking him far and wide so we decided to let you two do the writing instead! Thanks! :)

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  2. Thanks Lopo for your comments. I do appreciate them. I know what you mean about the emotional conflict thing. I can pin mine to that sometimes- other times it's just so random that there is no explanation. I keep thinking they'll go away...
    Bottom line is that I can tolerate them and so far, my husband puts up with me in this state. It can't be easy for him either.
    I just wonder how many women are going through this silently. I don't do "silently" very well, and had a good time writing this one. Glad you read it.
    Ms. Moon

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  3. LOL! "Don't do silent very well" means we're related, Ms. Moon!! Understatement of the year! Funny but even the boomers don't talk about it too much, and we discuss everything!! What bothered me more than the wretched hot flashes was the weight gain which I couldn't figure out if I was to live with or not!

    It DID get easier to take off,and I found a nice ?? "rule" in a book someplace that said, "You're allowed 12 lbs more than when you graduated from high school" THAT got me to the dreaded gym for strength training which as much as I hate to admit it, helped a lot evenually.

    I would say that by age 58 or so, the flashes will cool down to oven temp vs. the fires of hell, and eventually may become, like mine, only reason to turn your pillow to the cool side. OK.

    By the way, I'm currently living in Merida, Yucatan, MX, and you don't know HOT and MUGGY until you've been here! It's insane that this area is populated.

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  4. I can't believe you live in Merida! I've never been there, but love the parts of the Yucatan I've visited. I've probably been to Cozumel eight times in the past twenty years and my husband and I drove through the jungles to Chichen Itza a few years ago. I've always wanted to visit Merida which I hear is so beautiful. But yes, it's no doubt very hot.
    You give me hope for the hot flashes.
    As to the weight thing- I've taken THAT in hand and actually weigh less than I did when I graduated high school but that hasn't helped much either.
    Sigh.
    At least I can wear my jeans.

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  5. Good!! If I can't wear my jeans, I don't leave the house. I'm struggling with packing for a road trip -- a LONG road trip -- this very minute. Had to have a break before I just throw everything in the trash.
    I can't believe you know the YUCATAN!! :) One day we're certain to meet! Our new house has a pool, thank god, so I mostly hang out in my bathing suit and throw on my jeans to walk to Oxxo (read: Circle K).

    I'm headed north to the States on what was an 8 day trip to San Diego to be with daughter Libby who is having baby numero uno, as you know, but got insane and decided to take a "side trip' to San Miguel de Allende for a 5 day watercolor workshop with a gal whose work I love! Sooo, that'll make it a 10 days on the road through jungle, mountains, desert,and hopefully finally to San Diego! I'll think about driving back to either Florida or Merida after baby time! :) Hopefully son Juancho will manage enough days off to do that one with me!
    Aren't adult chidren just the BEST?? (Well, OURS anyway!! LOL!)
    Back to packing and then a siesta before I hit the road at 10 pm!

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  6. you women are the best. first time on the site (friend of Juancho and Lopo). EXCELLENT post!

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  7. Oh, Ample. Thank you so much. I've been reading your blog this morning and YOU are the best.
    I'm so glad to hear of your recovery. Keep getting stronger, keep writing.
    Ms. Moon

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