Thursday, December 03, 2009

Crowning and Croning

As my Facebook friends know, our cell phones at the ready here as we wait for our granddaughter to make her grand entrance into the world. We talked to a weary Mom-to-Be today, who is more than ready for the big event...especially since her midwife had assured here that it was going to happen this past weekend.

So it's a little ironic that as nature keeps her waiting for motherhood, nature is also keeping me waiting for, as my doctor puts it, "that special time in life."

I am in perimenopause. And as the fertile stage in my life winds down, my reproductive system has started acting like a vehicle hitting 100,000 miles on the odometer -- the timing has gone wonky; the gaskets leak sporadically; the fuel injector misfires. Something like that.


This process started, in fact, a few years ago. The first time I had issues serious enoough to make an appointment with a gyno, I was terrified that I was in the latter stages of a horrible cancer that had somehow escaped notice during my annual exam. The second time I was concerned but not terrified. (Especially when a sympathetic coworker, hearing my tale of woe, said, "Oh, honey, I was that way for three years, until I had the ol' zip-zip.")  The third time, I sighed and thought, "Not this again." The fourth time..."Let's just get it over with."

I'm ready to be a crone. I really am. I've been dancing my hormonal cha-cha since 1972, and I'm tired. I don't want to prolong my youth pharmaceutically; I don't want to go through an expensive invasive procedure to make the annoying perimenopausal symptoms go away. I just want the whole thing to stop. My hair is already gray; I already take my calcium supplements; I'm halfway there.

Crones are cool.

2 comments:

angela said...

Yay! Welcome--I've found more and more women my age (45) or around there going through hot flashes and weird stuff...one night went to a book club and a group of us had our own little therapy session. Much cheaper than the doc. And I started taking a particular cohosh with herbal supplements that is believe it or not, sold by WalMart (a place I hate to go). There is valerian for the night and ginseng for the day with the cohosh and I think that is what seems to do the most good.

Blessings.

LoieJ said...

Menopause was good for one thing: my feet were no longer cold all the time. I didn't get excessive hot flashes, but I do think it helps to live where it is rarely hot. I did eventually have surgery, but not for disease reasons, but because things were obeying gravity and that caused some pain. There was an unexpected bonus to that that I won't write about here. Now I think I'm well past all of the changes because I'm needing to wear long flannel jammies again.

So surgery was a good thing for me, but, yes, there can be unintended good and bad consequences of that.