I will be 47 years old this month. In my mind, I’m oh, basically around 32 and still have smooth skin, ability to drop 10 lbs if I feel like it and can sit Indian style. Then I try to sit Indian style and realize my hips don’t move that way anymore, and I can’t stand up. My neck is turning into a turkey gobbler and my left hip aches at night. Aging sucks.
My periods have been timely for years, in fact, the Swiss set their watches to my periods… until this month. My normal 28 day cycle turned into a 48 day “where in the hell is my period?” I decided to pull up WebMD and take a peek at menopause symptoms, I give you the charming list:
• Mood swings
• Decreased sex drive
• Hot flashes
• Sweating
• Racing heart (palpitations)
• Headaches
• Vaginal dryness and soreness
• Trouble sleeping
• Bone thinning (osteoporosis)
The only thing I have ever associated with menopause was a conversation I happened to hear whilst standing in Ordene’s kitchen. She was talking on the phone, circa 1985:
Ordene: (nodding her head up and down, with a concerned expression) “oh that’s too bad, are you itching too?”
Me: (drinking a coke and half listening)
Ordene: “Yes, very uncomfortable.”
Me: (silently wondering who is in such a bad physical state)
Ordene: “Well that’s what happens, no, there isn’t much you can do about it.”
After she hung up the phone, I inquired “who was that?” "Oh well, that was Grace McKinnon." “Well is she okay, what’s wrong with her?” “Oh well she has a dry vagina.”
I let this soak in (no pun intended); I was torn between asking a follow up question and wondering how Grace felt about the sorry state of her parched vagina being heralded in the Guttery kitchen. I came up with an “oh.”
I luckily fall under the category of Premenopause “Their periods have just started to get irregular, but they do not yet experience any classic menopausal symptoms such as hot flashes or vaginal dryness. A woman in premenopause is usually in her mid-to-late 40s.”
Grace McKinnon is just around the corner…
16 comments:
If you're turning 47 this month, that means I am too. Middle aged. We're middle aged, for hells sake!!! How the hell did that happen???!!!!
This really made me laugh - but would be a lot funnier if it weren't actually what we have to look forward to...
Did you worry, even for a moment, that you might be pregnant??? That would have been an even bigger nightmare!
I've been experiencing the hot flashes/night sweats on and off for a year or so... not looking forward to the rest of this list at all.
I think menopause should belong only to women with names like Ordene, Bertha and Venla Whipple.
I hate that term "middle aged" it sounds so gothic.
No I never even considered pregnancy!
I don't want to experience any of it...it's all horrible except, of course, not having a period anymore.
I am coming up right behind you in all this stuff, sistah. :( :(
I despise the terms given to women's bodyparts/activities. Were they devised in 10,000 B.C. by a bunch of old Greek men or what??? Can't we update them for the new millenium????
The word "vagina" NEVER gets more pleasant with the repeating. Not to mention all the symptoms that occur within that area to describe it, it just makes it sound horrific. And "menopause" itself just sounds like, I don't know, a break between boyfriends, at best.
Actually physically experiencing meno itself doesn't sound too bad. Heart palpitations and hot flashes sound like they have an undercurrent of excitement about them. And I wish my periods would stop immediately!! There is no downside to that, inho. Maybe it's just me trying to put a positive spin on the whole basket of shite that is getting oldddddddddddddd..........
Exactly, old Greek men, a man at any rate I'm sure came up with those horrific terms.
Basically our bodies dry up, we slowly are turning into sea coral without the sea.
Okay, when your pregnant everyone tells you their horror stories about morning sickness, delivery, bleeding nipples, and on and on and on but nobody every warns you about getting old!
I'm blind and deaf. Someone else has to finish my sentences for me. My aerobic workout is walking back and forth from the kitchen to the bedroom trying to remember why I went there to begin with. Oh, and did I mention, I'm the new national poster child for Hysterectomy-R-Us ... get one as soon as you can! It doesn't cure aging but it does cure anemia ... xanax cures everything else.
Karen, lol all very true. I like your work-out plan. Mine is climbing my stairs twice a day.
parched vagina.
those two little words just made my day. I will be cracking up repeatdly throughout the day, I just know it.
Thank you.
I AM DYING. DYING at this post. I am quite horrified by this post, but am looking forward to a dryer vagina.
Malia, a dry vagina is vastly overrated.
Luckily I still have about 20 years to go... but oh my hell, I'm not looking forward to it.
Sheesh… I was expecting, and looking forward to, a review of the show “Menopause, the Musical.” Now I’m just not sure what to do with this stuff bouncing around in my head…
Craig, I'm sorry, I should have had a cautionary message at the beginning of this.
No, really, that's ok... :) I just hope I can keep the term "parched vagina" from lodging itself in my brain.... LOL
I'm sorry, but all this talk of vagina is reminding me of Michelle's love of the word clitoris. She'd sneak up on me in hall at high school and just softly say it in my ear. And if I protested, she'd repeat it - several times. I hated that word.
It wasn't so much my love of the word, but your hatred of the word...lol
Wow, Michelle this just goes to show that Erica is a chip off the old block. That sounds like an exchange she and I would have!
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