Welcome to Me, Mentally Managing Menopause!
I would like to take a minute to introduce myself and tell you a little about why I am here, doing this blog about menopause. Let me start with, my name is Lyndsey. I am 44 and happily married. Our house is crazy. The things under our roof include us, our three dogs, two cats and two rats, as well as our daughter, her partner, their dog and eighth hermit crabs.
Within the last few years, I started noticing a decline in my mood. I was starting to be more reactive, angry at everyone that didn’t drive like me, annoyed at most people, most of the time. As the years passed, my mood got worse. At first, I assumed it was because of COVID or my back pain, or the political climate, or my daughter just being the same as me when I was her age. Then I started noticing other changes, my hips hurt more, I was tired, my focus and memory were very much lacking.
Then, more recently, came the night sweats. Keep in mind that I live in an old house and it was winter time, so I was really just thinking it was because the heater kicked on in the middle of the night and all the heat was rising to our room, except my husband, who was asleep next to me, was always snuggled under the covers like he was cold. Dammit.
I started talking to my therapist about the things I was feeling, the more we talked, the more it became clear that these symptoms were likely -Gasp!- perimenopause.
Every day I started realizing more changes in myself, more things that were likely symptoms of perimenopause that I had been dealing with for years. The worst ones, aside from the anger and night sweats, were the lack of sex drive, increased flow and irregularity of my period, more chin hairs, more frequent migraines and joint pain, severe depression and anxiety. I started tracking my symptoms on fertility friend, an app I had been using for many years to track my period. Sure enough, things got worse the week before I was supposed to start my period and for several cycles, I always got a migraine the first day of my period.
After about five months of waiting to establish with a new PCP, I was able to go in and talk to a doctor. I discussed my symptoms with her, and she confirmed that, based on my age, I was likely in perimenopause. She made some suggestions to help with relief, I will discuss these a little later, and suggested I talk to the females in my family about when they started and what their symptoms were. This is very much a cause of contention for me as my mom didn’t have any symptoms, she just simply stopped bleeding one day.
My mom is actually one of the reasons I am writing this blog. She never talked to me about this. Never told me when it happened to her or what she went through leading up to “the change”, so I was relatively unaware of when and what I should probably expect this stuff to start happening, although, since she didn’t have any symptoms anyway, I am not sure she would have been much help.
My goal with this blog is to help women experiencing similar things that I have been going through. I want to try different things to see what works for me so I can make suggestions. I want to be able to be here from someone that may need to vent or talk to cry or ask questions they may be too embarrassed to ask otherwise. I intend to be very open about the things that I am experiencing. There will be vulgar language, I will talk about periods and vaginas and exams and all the uncomfortable things that people don’t discuss because they are uncomfortable. I really don’t feel like menopause is talked about enough, it still feels like something that women feel like they have to go through alone or are embarrassed about because they are “old” and their bodies are doing “weird” things.
I am not a doctor, but I am a scientist by education, so I will do research on supplements and many of the aspects of menopause, so I can provide answers. I will always cite my sources, so you can do your own follow up research if you choose. I will make book recommendations and exercise recommendations, if I feel like they work, but I will also tell you about the things that didn’t work for me, because they might work for you. Beyond western medicine, I believe that we can learn a lot from eastern medicine, so I plan to try practices from Tai Chi and Chi Gong, as well as massage and acupuncture, and I will bring you along for the ride.
We are all on this journey together. You are not alone, let's get through this so that we can get on with the rest of our lives!
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