Not my mother’s hot flash, by guest blogger, Kristi Lodge.
I had my first hot flash in June 2018, in the waning days of my forty-second year. My girlfriend and I went to Portland Pride. On Saturday we found a café that served great breakfast and coffee within walking distance of our AirBnB. I was sipping hot coffee in the sunshine when suddenly I was shockingly, unreasonably warm. Then I was hot. My heart pounded, and I felt like I was wearing someone else’s, a stranger’s, skin. I called my stepmother. “I think I just had my first hot flash,” I announced. “No,” she said. “You’re too young for that.”
I’ve had others express surprise that I’ve already had hot flashes at my age. But it doesn’t surprise me at all. I was 14 when my mother was 40, and the beginning of my fertility, with all of its rages and surges, seemed to dovetail perfectly with the waning of hers. I was moody, miserable, cramping and bleeding. My mother was irritable, angry, and, above all, hot. My mother seemed be hot ALL THE TIME. No room was cold enough for her. In Pennsylvania, in the winter, she slept with her window cracked. She complained one morning after a night of temperatures in the teens that the dog, who slept in her room, had woken her up by crawling under the covers. “Yes, Mom! It’s cold!” I couldn’t understand her. How could someone be so hot so continuously?
All of this is to say that my template for perimenopause was unending heat. ALL THE TIME. And irritability and anger. I just assumed that my mother’s experience would be mine. But, so far, that hasn’t been the case. I’ve had hot flashes descend on me, usually at very inconvenient times, and they have fun twists like nausea and cramping. But I haven’t had the constant heat that seemed to be my mother’s experience. At least not yet; it’s still early in the process. When I brought this up to my OBGYN at my annual visit, she shrugged and said: “Most people sail through menopause.” Really? Perhaps it’s time we shared our experiences, we who are on this journey of winding down our fertility and moving into the next stage. We need role models and mentors who can show us that we’ll come through to the other side
Find Kristi on Twitter @Kristi_Lodge or her website: www.incipitcareer.com
False fire burns brightly, by Mary Ann Petersen
Menopause. It could happen to you!
Imagine this:
Out of nowhere, a heaviness descends, as if a large monster sat on top of you. This makes you feel strangely uncomfortable. It’s hard to put a finger on it. Oppressive. But, no one, including you, can see the monster. It doesn’t speak and isn’t spoken to. What follows is too much heat.
A certain panic state takes hold.
I looked at the Chinese medicine handbook. It’s pretty involved. This was my diagnosis and treatment: kidney yin deficiency/liver yang rising; therefore tonify kidney essence and subdue liver yang rising. It’s called deficient heat or false fire in Chinese medicine.
This sudden upheaval of the interior feels like the regulation station within has blown a gasket. Slipped a nut. Or the figurative jogging hamster has blown her knee and the wheel is off its stand, disrupting the healthy circulation of temperatures.
The Mayo Clinic book had a simple suggestion: Keep to cooler rooms.
It feels like you may have just made a horribly embarrassing statement, say, in front of North America. Your face heats as if leaning into a thousand suns.
With nowhere to go, the sudden onset fire oozes down into the arm pits, via the neck, flushing down through the thorax.
My landscape portrait state of being is a large red barn with a massive wood stove burning 20 logs inside. Clothing is not required. Outside, there is a hard frost chill on the grass. There are two choices: inside the barn sweating, or outside the barn, freezing.
I’m not in balance right now.
I once timed the flashes and they were like a Swiss train: 10:15/10:50; 11:15/11:50, and so on for a few hours. What’s that about? And they lasted exactly two minutes. It’s a systematic operation on its own schedule and I think the best way to understand it is to study its patterns and get on board. It boarded me, so I might as well get on board to be the student and the specimen.
What’s the fix for hot flashes and headaches?
Tonify kidney essence, subdue liver yang rising, nourish yin, calm heart, cool heat. Put some ukulele chords to this and you have a hit!
They stopped happening.
How interesting!
Find Mary Ann on Twitter @Bunkymap
