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:
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.
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.
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