Menopause … and other things from the pits of Hell
I’m three years shy of 50, yet I have been dealing with menopause symptoms for a few years now. Until recently, perimenopause, as they call it, has been manageable. A few hot flashes every now and then and a little irritability — no problem. But in January, I seemed to hit a low point, the doldrums of menopause Hell, in fact. An onslaught of night sweats, hot flashes, insomnia, and depression rained down on me, and the measly over-the-counter menopause vitamins wouldn’t help. I was in a really bad way, as my husband and poor children could tell you.
So I’m sitting there in my lady doctor’s office, feeling sorry for myself, on the verge of a mental breakdown, waiting for her to prescribe a solution to all of my problems, and I glimpse a travel mug on her desk that reads, “Dr. ______, at your cervix.” And I literally almost laugh out loud. Almost. Now, I do not use the acronym LOL in texts or e-mails or on social media, because I am not one to ever LOL. It’s hard enough to get an L out of me, let alone a full-blown L-O-L. But this mug with its brilliant Cricut-lettered play on words almost did it.
And the point is this: The mug not only cheered me up, it also made me realize I need to look at the bright side of things more often. So here I am to share the positive side of menopause with the positively positive lists below.
Things I like about menopause
No more buying period products. The feminine hygiene product business is a racket if I ever saw one. That stuff is expensive. Now I have extra money for things that make me happy, like shoes and chocolate.
No more PMS. I can say goodbye to the monthly cramps and bloating and crabbiness — great!
No more packing my purse with period products — or forgetting to. We’ve all been there, and I can’t tell you how embarrassing it is for a grown woman to have to ask someone at work to borrow a pad. I finally learned to keep extras in my car and at work.
No more period. Period. That in and of itself is the biggest perk.
These are the positive points of life in menopause, but I have to be honest — I’ve traded period products for Poise pads, I still get cramps sometimes, and now that I’ve started hormone replacement therapy, guess what has come back? My period. So much for the biggest perk of menopause. I mean, seriously, can I not get a break?
But let’s still think positively. Here is another positive list:
Things worse than menopause
Giant cockroaches. Those devil spawn will always top lists of things worse than anything.
Death. I’ll just leave that right there.
So there you have it — the long list of positive things about menopause. If you know a woman currently suffering the malady of menopause, please check on her. She is not OK.
A little video that may help: