In Which I Groan…About Menopause Awareness Month
Give us an ‘M’! ‘E’! ‘N’ -oh…it’s menopause awareness month. Where’s my elephant’s-trunk-something?
Savvy entrepreneurs are taking the piss with this stuff aren’t they? Every day is a national or international day of something. Every week is a week of something else. Full months are dedicated to giving things up or becoming more aware of them. And many charities now advertise on places like ‘X’ that this is the month to consider walking the length of Britain to raise money for them. Give us a break!
18th October this year is simultaneously National No Beard Day (celebrating the ‘clean-shaven among us’ — come on ladies!), National Chocolate Cupcake Day (now you are talking) and, of course, World Menopause Day.
The theme of this year’s world menopause day is Hormone Replacement Therapy. Give me a ‘H’…
There are .co.uk’s putting together some sensational training packages (£££) to help corporate entities boost their workforce’s HRT awareness levels, much like HRT boosts our flagging hormone levels. This is genius stuff — an impressive blend of entrepreneurial spirit, capitalism and sophisticated marketing in order to sell inclusivity for the masses. Corporate leadership teams absolutely love this stuff and will pay good money in order to tick that box that they think make their employees feel what they think is ‘valued’. I am very cynical about this (can you tell?). These initiatives do not make me feel one bit valued; increasing my annual take-home might, but they won’t do that because there isn’t enough money left after the ‘inclusivity’-sellers have been handsomely rewarded for enlightening us about the bleeding obvious.
I am in fact going through the menopause so I can say these things and if the consultants and their leaderships have a problem with my attitude, I suggest they do some of their own awareness training and stop being so damn judgmental.
As a woman of 52 years of age, I don’t know how best to celebrate World Menopause Day. I can’t yet celebrate HRT. I have patches I haven’t used yet because I made the classic mistake of reading the information leaflet first and I’m terrified that applying the patches will make my bones crumble and my heart and womb simultaneously shrivel. I don’t know whether I’m more likely or less likely to get cancer with patches — possibly both — and/or invite blood to clot in my veins but I want no part of it. I know I’m a wimp.
These patches are meant to treat the symptoms. I hope they are symptoms. If what I’m experiencing is not in fact side effects of menopause, then an alternative prospect is that I’m going mad.
Sleep
Let’s talk about sleep. I have been known to wake up in the wee hours with a worry that has been amplified several hundred-fold by the darkness. The other night, it was cancer. I had a very slight uncomfortable sensation in my throat and this led me down a mental rabbit hole which began with consideration of the possiblity of throat cancer — to a deepening anxiety that I may be ‘riddled’ with it and my days numbered. I had to get up for a few minutes. Truth be told I had a small brandy (and I don’t really drink alcohol due to being a lightweight). I then went back to sleep and woke up fine.
Some nights are menaced with anxiety. But I think that’s more to do with my impending divorce. Or rather the financial bit of it. Hormonal imbalances don’t help. Nor does waking up in a pond. Night sweats are gross.
Add to that: strange arm tinglings, random joint pains, micro depressive episodes, suspected spleen issues (thanks Google) and phantom arrhythmias.
Is it normal? Is it menopausal? Should I tell my manager I need a mental health day? And if I do, will I have to endure a return to work interview and be offered counselling?
Probably. I wouldn’t dream of mentioning this stuff at work for fear of a bombardment of well-being initiatives. Do you really want me to tell you how dropping a ‘this has to be done by close of play’ at 4pm makes me feel? I thought not.
Irrational Fear
My brain is super-susceptible at the moment. I watched Uncanny on iPlayer because I’ve always liked a good ghost story. Brilliant program, but now when I wake up at 3.00 am I have to consider, not only my impending and imaginary demise, my financial ruin and lack of wherewithal but also the prospect of there being a presence in the room with me. Last night I heard a floorboard creak and thought ‘Right, here we go’, readying myself for a supernatural experience. Idiot. Is being idiotic a symptom?
Weight gain
Let’s hear it for weight-gain. I once had a metabolism that could have won olympic medals for the speed at which it burned up calories. People used to ask me if I ate enough and seemed genuinely worried that I might be starving myself, but it just wasn’t so. I could and did eat anything — cakes, doughnuts, chocolate, chips, everything, even healthy nutritious food on occasion. I remember feeling concerned in my early 40s that there was a bit of cellulite gathering around the thighs – wow, I didn’t know what cellulite was then but I sure do now. And, sorry, what the actual hell has happened to what used to be my waistline? Is blancmanginess a symptom? (Is it even a word? It should be.) More importantly, is there a cure?
And Is It Normal that I stubbornly refuse to buy clothes a single dress size up, hoping that any discomfort I may feel around what used to be my waist as those jeans bite in, will simply encourage me not to eat crap? And in any case, does that work? Does it hell. I try to counterbalance my affection for eating biscuits and other assorted nice but unhealthy things, with unreasonable amounts of exercise. I reason that if I punish myself for an hour while repeatedly glancing at my fitness watch to see if I’ve hit my calorie-burning target, then I will have ‘earned’ that biscuit. I haven’t. I just nullify the hour of exercise.
And I mean this sincerely; it doesn’t work. Nothing does. 15km hike in the peaks? Half a kilo heavier the next day. (And don’t tell me it’s muscle. We both know it’s the curse commonly referred to as ‘water retention’. I didn’t ask my body to do this, and I don’t want to retain water. I’m not a camel.)
Hot flushes
Or is it flashes? My friend used to call them ‘tropical moments’, which left me with the impression they were a somewhat exotic phenomenon. (Also potentially useful for keeping the heating bills down in the winter months.) Alas, they’re deeply inconvenient. And beermats do not make useful cooling implements should I suddenly have the same internal temperature as molten lava in the pub. I have since acquired an antique Spanish fan (don’t ask) which I can whip out at any time, any place, including the middle of a meeting if need be, to cool myself down in the style of Sophia Loren. Sometimes I think of brandishing it aggressively like Lord Toranaga in Shogun.
And what exactly is the point of deodorant? It doesn’t work when it’s really up against it, does it? Five minutes out of the shower and all I did was get dressed and I need a shower again.
Brain Fog
Possibly the most annoying and definitely the most embarrassing of symptoms. I am literally part way through making an important point in an important meeting, attended by senior people, and all of a sudden my memory is wiped clean. Not so much a fog actually; a tornado. I don’t know what to do in these moments.
Is this where all the (£££) training comes in? In these days of oversharing, I should probably adopt a no-nonsense tone and say something like ‘excuse me I’m going through the menopause and have just had an attack of stolen sentence syndrome, carry on…’
It’s not just sentences though. At times it is a complete detachment from the here, coupled with absence from the now. I realised how bad it was when twice in one day I was driving my car and stopped at red traffic lights. Suddenly, the car behind me was beeping and I hadn’t noticed the lights had changed to green. No I wasn’t on my phone…I simply wasn’t there. I don’t know where I was.
Elephant trunk something
My work bestie, B, is going through it too. Sometimes she just wants to start crying for no apparent reason and sometimes her boobs feel too heavy for her body. She’s on the gel pumps.
She told me today that someone she knows swears by this stuff that they put in their tea (for brain fog); ‘Elephant trunk something.’ Maybe not trunk. Elephant something. A powder, works miracles. In your tea.
So we are both googling: elephant powder forgetful help menopause. The results are all about the amazing memories elephants have. Another says an elephant’s brain is the size of a peanut.
Actually, B says, might have been a different animal not an elephant. I try googling ‘powder, tea, menopause help’. The top result and we both say it at the same time: Lion’s Mane.
It’s a fucking mushroom.
I tell B that I’m off to Chester Zoo tonight with a pair of scissors to see if I can snip some mane to put in my tea. She is telling me that she was close – it was definitely an animal she was thinking of, just not an elephant. An African animal too. Close, sort of. An inclusive manager might pat us on the shoulder, smile knowingly, and say someting like ‘that’s OK, ladies, I understand’. I’d probably want to twat them. Menopause!
Social moth
Socialising. I’m not enjoying this at present. Maybe it’s a lack of self-assuredness. Maybe it’s because none of my ‘going out’ clothes fit me any more. Maybe it’s because I notice subtle changes in my skin and that blasted transition into being old becoming more and more visible.
Is that a bad thing? Is beauty always equated with youth? Not many middle aged blokes dump their similarly-aged wives for ‘older models’ do they? Just saying.
When the mood is right, I drink loads of water for health purposes (despite hating the taste of straight water) and I think this helps. But I can’t always be bothered to. And so I get to thinking that I’d rather not. Socialise that is. That said, nothing gets between me, my friend and karaoke night — that’s a solid in the calendar every month.
Inclusivity
We’re supposed to talk about these things aren’t we? But this involves someone ‘going first’ and admitting to things that we may later regret. I mean, you don’t actually want your work colleagues to know how internally mad you feel on a daily basis, do you?
And what if you overshare and then ask ‘is this normal’ only to be met with an awkward silence and an excruciating ‘not really, no’?
If we are holding an open umbrella over a range of different discomforts and assigning them safely as menopausal, then maybe it’s OK, under the protection of this umbrella, that what we say beneath it, stays beneath it?
And is this insufferable internal dialogue related to the menopause or does it just mean I’ve had a few days off work and it only takes a few days for my mind to disintegrate into self-indulgent twaddle?
P-word warning ❗️
Last year, I couldn’t seem to go 3 weeks without a period and ended up scarily anaemic. Now I can’t predict when the next one is coming but the gaps between are much longer.
Then when it comes, oh my God, it’s biblical. 2 weeks of flow and gush. I’m sorry to say but on a couple of occasions the bathroom looked like a crime scene. I’m sorry. It’s so depressing. I can’t stop it and there isn’t a sanitary towel big enough to contain it. Clothes, bedding and the office chair are all at risk of me leaving behind DNA and it is exhausting, constant anxiety.
Change is happening. We used to call it ‘the change’ once. And change is scary; always has been. Because we don’t know what to expect. Once, I would have tapped into the knowledge of the next best thing to a gynaecologist: my mother. Unfortunately, she passed away in 2019, so I can’t ask her and I really don’t want to join the well-meaning work menopause group to share all of this. Work is where I’m still pretending to be sane, competent and highly useful.
This is why I question all of this ‘inclusivity’ around menopause. Is that senior manager really going to ease off when I’m having a bad day? If so, can they do that for all the women having a bad period day? Or even a bad hair day? It affects us emotionally don’t you know. What if I do start crying at my desk? Or my voice wobbles when I speak at the meeting. Tell me everyone in that room is going to think not one bit less of me because they have ‘done the training’. Bollocks.
Also, I’m sure that I’m the sort of person who can start experiencing new symptoms only after I’ve learned they are possible. Another reason not to join the group chat. Much easier to put it all in a blog that I can be fairly sure only about 3 people will read. You three are in my inner circle now, guys.
So, as it is World Menopause Day soon, I send this out to the universe. I don’t think I’m mad, and you probably aren’t either, but we might be a bit menopausal around the blancmangey edges. I’m sure I read somewhere that at times like this, we should be kind to ourselves, and probably partake in some retail therapy, and eat cake with friends, and dance like no-one’s watching (check that no-one’s watching first). And don’t read patient information leaflets.
Happy HRT day to all my fellow blancmanges for when it comes! May your flushes be few and your elephant’s trunk light the way through your brain fog.
