Does anyone else have to induce hypothermia to sleep at night? Asking for myself.
-A woman of a certain age
I guess this is the part where I can officially say that I am going through menopause. Yes, it came as a surprise to me. My mother never talked to me about menopause or perimenopause. She did mention change of life and the fact that women could go crazy but other than that there were no discussions about the physical symptoms, so I was clueless as to what was happening to my body years before now. It’s not that my mother and I couldn’t have conversations about this topic, it’s just that my mother had a hysterectomy and breezed through this stage of life. (Her words, not mine).
Phase 1 – Night Sweats
I had a friend that I didn’t know went through “the change” at 35 but she basically suffered in silence as far as I know until the rest of our group of friends started talking about weird things happening to our bodies. Then she started volunteering information about what we were in for. I didn’t understand why my neck started sweating out the blue at night. I would wake up drenched from my neck to my collar bone. I thought I had a condition. Was it thyroid cancer? Why was just my neck excreting copious amounts of sweat?! I had to start tying my hair up with a scarf at night to keep myself from waking up looking like a matted cat.
Phase 2 – Warning Shot, Small but Big Change
I didn’t even know that’s what it was! I just remember feeling sick the first few times it happened. I felt all this pressure in my body. Then it was like I needed a sugary drink because my body was expending an exorbitant amount of energy that I didn’t have to utilize (when doing simple tasks like grocery shopping), and I would start feeling very weak. Next, I would start to feel like I was suffocating. I would usually have a coat on at this time and I would tear it off or risk passing out on the ground. That went on for a while and I didn’t think it was hot flashes or menopausal because it usually only happened while I was out in stores with my coat on. I actually thought I needed to get checked for “the sugar”. Naturally, I adjusted and would just take my coat off as soon as I got inside a store and hang my coat over my cart while shopping.
Phase 3 – Irregularity, Fatigue, and Bloodletting
Okay, this phase was the most troublesome because I lost my sense of security when my cycles became irregular. I mean, I had stability. I knew how much time I had every month. I knew the week and day, and sometimes the hour. All that was swept out from under me! They started getting spaced out past my normal 4 weeks. So much so that my poor kids were on edge thinking there was going to be another sibling interfering with their comfortable life because they’d see pregnancy test kits stocked in my hair supply drawer in my bathroom. I could no longer trust my body.
I must mention the fatigue I experiencec in the days leading up to my cycle and the next couple days at the start. I felt severely anemic like I was dragging a vampire behind me whose mouth was attached at my wrist continuously sucking my life’s blood away. I could not get enough sleep ever! No amount of vitamins or hydration or exercise made a difference. I would spend an entire week in a daze feeling like I was functioning in slow motion.
Not to mention the horror I had to deal with having waterfall flows. What in the ritualistic sacrificial lamb was going on there?! And, and I must go into detail here because I want you to understand my struggle. The blood would flow in any direction. Out the back and even up the front! Do you understand the gush that has to happen for it to flow upwards? Against gravity? I dare not sneeze too hard without fresh supplies handy. I wish I knew about them period panties at the time. I could’ve avoided embarrassment and saved some clothes.
Phase 4 – Spontaneous Combustion
I remember when my coworker would have hot flashes and how aggressive she would get if she even thought myself or our other coworker had our space heaters on. I used to be tickled by it. Especially since I thought it was something that I was never going to experience. It would be the dead of winter and she’d tell us to turn our space heaters off and the way she would say it we dare not refuse. We weren’t crazy. We adapted and brought in blankets.
Still, I thought this was something I would never have to go through. Then the first one hit full blast. That stuff that was happening to me out shopping was basically a gentle summer breeze compared to the molten lava circulating my entire body. You couldn’t tell me that I wasn’t going to explode. You ever watch a light bulb get super bright and hot right before it blows out? That must be what happens to our bodies as we stop ovulating and our womb dies causing such intense heat inside the body.
Phase 5 – Insomnia (and not in that order)
Now here’s where I can see a woman going crazy with this last symptom. It’s god-awful to not be able to sleep at night every single night for weeks on end. I thought it was because of my family life and job (I carry a lot of stress) and that my mind wouldn’t let me rest. No! Hot flashes, and a memory foam mattress that functioned to radiate my body heat back at me as if I lie atop the sun. This caused me to flop like a fish out of water. I would check my step counter watch in the morning. I was averaging 316 steps a night without leaving the bed!
Team No Sleep!
Then because of the lack of sleep my speech and memory started to be affected. I’d forget common words or start stuttering, and I couldn’t remember information from one meeting at work to the next. I felt so stupid and incompetent. Then finally after three long-suffering years, my godmother came to mind. She’d sleep with her window two inches open in the dead of winter with a big ass box fan blowing in the room. I didn’t know how my godfather survived. I was so ignorant as a child. I remember being in disbelief at how she could sleep in such conditions when I would enter her frigid room in the mornings. I’d cry out and beg for heat as she fixed my hair.
Anyway, I was desperate and like her, in the dead of winter I gave it a try. Best night of sleep I had in ages! After a few nights of cryogenic sleep, I had to test to see if it was a fluke and went to bed keeping the window closed and fan off. The flopping started within minutes, the mattress started baking me, and sleep was escaping me. I put a stop to that foolishness about 2 a.m. and haven’t gone back to my old ways since. I did call my godmother and apologized, admitting that I now fully understand why she kept her window open.
Let’s Talk
Nevertheless, I hope my little share wasn’t too much for you. I opened myself up to hope someone else won’t suffer as long as I did before figuring it out. I wish someone had overshared with me so that I would know what to expect and know that there’s normalcy in the supernatural workings of female biology. I can see why women get a little crazy. (Not that I did but I felt my hold on sanity was getting pretty tenuous with insomnia).
Ladies, open up a little more. Let’s start talking to each other and ask questions. I learned some things and would love to share.