Welcome to “The Pause!” Every Wednesday (if I can find women of a certain age who are willing to share their experience with me and you) there will be a new post.
Why am I doing this? Well, I’m almost 50 and I would REALLY like to feel less alone in this new chapter of my life. I feel like our culture doesn’t want to talk about menopause. It’s like if you admit that your period has stopped, you are admitting to something shameful or unnatural. Like death, menopause is both inevitable (if you’re lucky enough to grow older) and pretty darn natural. I used to think it was hard to get people to talk about death, but you can double that hesitancy when it comes to chatting about “THE CHANGE!”
If you read the first post, I am now on a quest to find media representations of a menopausal woman. This past week, someone recommended this TedTalk about the menopausal brain. It’s not from a movie, but it’s quite informative! If you know of any story lines in movies or television shows that address this major transition in a woman’s life without making it a punchline, leave it in the comments!
So, before we begin our chat, let’s define perimenopause and menopause from Merriam Webster’s online dictionary.
Definition of menopause
1: the natural cessation of menstruation that usually occurs between the ages of 45 and 55 also : the period during which such cessation occurs
— called also climacteric
— compare PERIMENOPAUSE
2: cessation of menstruation from other than natural causes
Definition of perimenopause
: the period around the onset of menopause that is often marked by various physical signs (such as hot flashes and menstrual irregularity)
So now that that’s clear, here’s my fourth willing participant who has chosen to remain anonymous AND THAT’S OKAY! (I feel like Stuart Smalley.) And you can too!
Photo by cottonbro
1. Do you remember your mother or an older woman in your family going through “the change of life?” If so, what was that like?
At the time, I didn’t know because I was so uneducated about any kind of “girl stuff.” My mom just did not talk about it. But looking back, I can see that my mom had a difficult time with perimenopause, but seemed to fare reasonably well after menopause itself (at age 48). During perimenopause (likely starting in her early 40s) she was extremely moody and often seemed fatigued.
2. Was perimenopause/menopause ever discussed with you by your mother, sister, friend, or a doctor? If so, what did that discussion entail?
It was never discussed until recently when I first started experiencing perimenopause and told my mother about my symptoms. Again, my mother has just never been very comfortable discussing “girl stuff” and would only provide a bit of information. She shared that she reached menopause at age 48 after two years with very irregular cycles. Her claim is that she “sailed through menopause” and that “goodness no I didn’t need any of that HRT.” I think she did largely sail through menopause, but struggled with perimenopause.
3. Was menopause something you feared or something you looked forward to? (Yay, no more periods! Boo, I’m drowning in my own sweat!)
Given that I had no one raise the topic with me, I was very ignorant about menopause. I thought it occurred much later than it does (like perhaps late 50s?) and I had no idea that perimenopause was a thing. Given my ignorance, I had very little fear. I have always been a very health-conscious person who takes good care of myself. I figured that my healthy lifestyle would get me through menopause just fine. Of course, I was dead wrong. Despite all of my healthy choices, perimenopause hit me like a ton of bricks and my quality of life severely declined within a matter of months.
4. What was your experience like? Did you burst into flames? Grow a mustache? Gain a ton of weight? Lose your hair? Lose your mind? Or was it easy peasy, Tampax can kiss my vageasy?
I am still perimenopausal, so I will speak about my experience with perimenopause. It started at age 40, almost on the dot. Heading into perimenopause, I was a healthy and content person with very steady/stable moods. I was reasonably energetic and always very productive in every aspect of my life. Practically overnight, I just felt awful. I started having bouts of sudden, severe and inexplicable depression. I felt extremely fatigued. I couldn’t think straight and had very little motivation to get through my day. I work professionally and my work performance started declining (thankfully at that time I had been with the same organization for many years, so people gave me the benefit of the doubt). I started feeling dizzy – almost like vertigo and developed tinnitus. Part of my vulva also started disappearing and my sexual functioning declined. I talked to both my OBGYN and my GP about my symptoms but was completely dismissed by both of them and they refused to run labs to test my hormone levels. Even the atrophy of my vulva was dismissed after ruling out dermatological conditions (“oh honey, everyone is a little crooked”). At that point, I started educating myself and spent hours and hours reading books and articles about menopause and hormone therapy. I learned enough to know that patients can order their own labs in most US states (if paying out of pocket). So, I ordered my own hormone panel (plus a few other tests like thyroid) and had the blood drawn at a local lab. I had to pay out of pocket, but it was worth every penny because my labs showed my hormones very low across the board plus imbalanced with each other. I then sought out a private hormone specialist and started getting the care I needed. I have since switched insurance plans and doctors and am now feeling much better with a combination of progesterone, testosterone and some localized estrogen to treat the uro-genital issues.
5. Is there anything you wish you had known before you went through perimenopause/menopause or anything you would have done differently?
I wish I had known much more about what perimenopause and menopause can entail for some women and that symptoms can start in our 40’s (sometimes even younger). I would have educated myself, and would have had a hormone panel done when I was younger so that I would have a comparison when things started shifting. I also would have known that my fibrocystic breasts (which started a few years before my perimenopause symptoms) were caused by a hormone imbalance. At that point, I would have sought out bioidentical progesterone, which likely would have eased the onset of perimenopause in general. Having more knowledge about symptoms and the possible age of onset would have helped me identify my issues and get help earlier.
I found the book "The Estrogen Window" to be helpful, especially to help me understand what the research really does (and doesn't) prove regarding the risks with HRT. The book is too enthusiastic about old-school synthetic HRT, but otherwise it gave me a really good baseline understanding of HRT and menopause.
Thank you so much for sharing your experience. And you can too! Just reach out via my contact page. If you want me to reach out to you and help me do my little part to help save the USPS. I bought a TON of stamps and if you sign up for my newsletter, I will send you some swag (stickers and bookmarks) from my debut novel Forever 51, which is about an eternally menopausal vampire on a quest to become mortal again.
If you preorder the Kindle version, here, and send me a screen shot of your purchase, I will send you a really cool (literally and figuratively) foldable fan that says “Immortality’s a Bitch.”
Last, but certainly not least, if you like reading these posts, please click like, comment and/or share. Let’s get the conversation started!