Menopause - Nature's Way Of Having A Laugh!
Hi Ladies,
I've spent so much time here pouring my heart out (and thoughts and rants), and you have patiently listened
, shared your experiences, soothed my fears and kept me sane. My battle is nowhere near over yet, so I want to take on my seething resentment, anger and rage
(at nothing or no-one in particular) and turn it into something positive, and dare I say it, perhaps to lift your spirits in the process. Here's my attempt to give something back to the forum and all those supportive souls here, to laugh back at this joke that nature plays on us called menopause.
P.S. If at any point it feels like a thinly disguised rant, then please forgive my failure at turning the said negative into something positive.
So here we are, burning the keyboards on the menopause forum. As much as I love the company here, and I am sure you do too, don't you sometimes feel like screaming at the world ‘But I have work to do/life to live/kids to collect/holidays to go on/ cupboards to tidy/ pub to go to to get tipsy in…'? How many things have we put on hold just to deal with this blooming thing called menopause? I didn't sign up for it, did you?
Most women I know are conscientious, put others first, take care of the family (young ones, old ones, the grown up kids including many a husband…), so is it so much to ask for in our forties/fifties/sixties to get some decent sleep? Not to sweat in bed as if we walked into a sauna fully dressed? Then shiver in cold as if plunged to a freezer a few minutes later? Seriously, what kind of a joke is this?
Let's start with evolution. According to Darwin & Co, if a trait in a species serves an evolutionary purpose (that is survival of the species, or procreation), then the trait gets passed on from generation to generation. If a trait has no evolutionary advantage for a species, then it dies out the way dinosaurs/dodo went. So can somebody please explain why half of the world's population needs to carry a microwave oven inside them throughout their middle age and sweat bucketloads in bed? Is this perhaps nature's clumsy attempt to address worldwide water shortages by recruiting women to produce water once we can no longer produce babies?
Take global warming… If it is such a threat to our planet, then whoever came up with the idea of menopause clearly did not think it through. Never mind the cars or CO2 or cows farting that heat up the planet, it is the women of this planet going through menopause that melt the ice caps, raise global water levels, cause extreme weather conditions from raging hurricanes to devastating mud slides and coastal erosion. Seriously, do women have to get the blame for everything?! (Wait a minute, have I just described how many of us feel?)
What about all that advice on how to stop/prevent/reduce hot flushes? Most of us have tried cutting out smoking, drinking, caffeine, calories, food in general, and did it work? Like hell it did! If it were so easy to fool the hypothalamus when ovaries decide to shut shop and oestrogen goes AWOL, wouldn't we all have tried it already? Hands up how many of you enjoy palpitating at night until you feel on the brink of a heart attack, so tired that all you can think of is sleep, ‘I'm going to die if I don't get some sleep'? Changing bedlinen all the time anyone? (we discarded pyjamas already) Having a shower every hour? Because women have nothing better to do with their lives?
You've done your bit for the survival of the species, sacrificed your uterus, your figure, looks, sleep, hobbies and whatever else, dedicated yourself entirely to small creatures that are the future of our world, and what do you get in return?! Menopause.
And don't even get me started on meditating, breathing exercises, yoga, mindfulness and the lot. I'm sure they have a place and maybe they help some women, but why do so many symptoms start at 3am when we are fast asleep? We are told to stop worrying and manage stress, but when we are asleep, simply minding our own business in a blissful oblivion, we are not worrying or stressing, just sleeping! So why do we have to be roused from this rare bliss with a thud in the brain (hammer in the hypothalamus anyone?), followed by palpitations as if a monster was chasing us? We lie there thinking, but I am not worried about anything, I just want to sleep… yet the heart is racing, and then you brace your self for what's coming next. Microwave goes on and the cooking starts. You keep thinking waterfalls, ice packs, melting ice caps, knowing all too well that you just have to ride it out, so you do, lie there with the blanket kicked off, waiting for the cooking to stop. Then the cold shiver sets in, blanket comes back, and again you ride it out, counting how many hours you have left before the alarm goes off. When you finally stop shivering, so tired you could die, you feel the sleep coming on, and then bang, it all starts again. And again, and again. When you finally give up on the idea of sleep and tell yourself you can survive on a few hours a night (lucky you!), you try said meditation, breathing, counting sheep, only to realise that our bodies are far too clever to be fooled that easily. Just ask those women who wanted to give birth ‘naturally', only to scream for pain relief later.
So my answer to the ‘expert' advice to go and meditate is this: if all the women suffering from menopausal symptoms really took up the ‘expert' advice and dedicated themselves to meditation - say we all enrol in a buddhist retreat somewhere in Nepal - imagine the global fall out. How many men could locate at least one of the following: a) a pair of socks, b) washing machine, c) kids' PE kit, d) kids' school?, in the absence of the fairy called wife/girlfriend?
After yet another sleepless night, you promise yourself to improve your no-fat, no sugar, no fun diet even more. You eat even less of everything (by now you are an expert on thermogenesis effect of various foods), you are practically vegetarian, your windowsill is brimming with sprouted alfalfa, cupboards are full of beans (ha ha), you are pouring flax seeds on everything, chewing sage like it's a chewing gum. Half of your garden is dedicated to growing sage on an industrial scale, a business idea you came up with during those sleepless hours - to set up a menopause fighting sage farm to support you financially once you lose/resign from your job that does not recognise hot flushes, or cooling fans for that matter). Just to be sure, you also swallow every supplement on the market that promises to help with hot flushes and palpitations and sleep. What happens then? If you are human, you collapse at the table, forgetting all of the above.
Please, please ‘experts', stop saying that menopause is a natural stage in a woman's life. Trust me, if you have ever experienced incessant hot flushes or palpitations, you'd know that there is nothing natural about being boiled from the inside or having your heart race like it's on speed (no, I have never taken drugs in my life either).
Apparently we live in times of equality. Well, show me a man with a hot flush and a dry vagina, night sweats and cold shivers, and I will believe we live in a equal world. Over to you…
AndieKC
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Topic: Menopause - Nature’s Way Of Having A Laugh! (Read 8662 times)