WHAT THE FRIG… I THOUGHT IT WAS JUST HOT FLASHES?!
Can we be real here?
NOBODY warned me about perimenopause…
and this sh*t aint for the weak
Like, WHAT THE HECK, BODY!? I *just* finished postpartum, and now you’re dropping THIS menses missile at me?!
To be fair, I don’t actually KNOW when I started perimenopause because I had no idea what to even be looking out for. BECAUSE NOBODY WARNED ME THAT I NEEDED TO BE LOOKING OUT FOR ANYTHING!
My mother experienced menopause early, which stands to reason that *I* would have a similar experience in my fertility journey.
IF that is the case, then I actually started peri BEFORE I got pregnant with my now 2 year old.
Which means that so many of the things that I experienced physically and emotionally the last 2 years – things I attributed to a lengthy postpartum period – were ACTUALLY the early start of my womb closing shop.
WHO. FRIGGIN. KNEW?!
(hint: not me)
It feels necessary to give a WARNING before you go any further…
There might be TMI in this blog. So, if you are appalled at hearing anything adjacent to the ins and outs of MY “ins and outs”, then CLOSE THIS PAGE NOW; go find another blog to read on hotcountry1035.ca – there are lots to choose from!!
BUT, if you are like me and have found yourself wading neck deep in a POOL OF CRAP that had no signage up to even WARN YOU IT WAS DIRECTLY IN YOUR PATH… then read on.
Back in May, virtual care platform Maple released a survey of more than 1,500 women across Canada, asking how they feel about the shape of our health care.
More than half the women said the system does NOT meet their needs, and nearly 75% said they don’t feel taken seriously when they see a practitioner.
One of the biggest challenges highlighted in the report is access to specialist care, particularly for hormone-related conditions – like perimenopause.
Nearly 60% of women surveyed said it was difficult to even GET an appointment with a specialist – and I can speak to that: When I tried to get in to see someone, I discovered that there were VERY FEW options (basically, ONE option unless you were willing to pay out of pocket) and the BEST I could get was a spot on a waitlist.
BUT, even when women finally did manage to get an appointment, more than half said they left feeling dismissed or minimized, and felt that their symptoms were completely overlooked.
This isn’t just a Nova Scotia problem; it’s an issue for women COAST TO COAST.
To make matters worse, when it comes to something like perimenopause (something that EVERY SINGLE PERSON WITH A UTERUS WILL EXPERIENCE AT SOME POINT IN HER LIFE), there is no official method of diagnosing it.
This means that different physicians may diagnose and treat perimenopause differently, based on their training and experience. AND when you look at the fact that many physicians actually receive very limited training in menopausal medicine… that makes the situation SO MUCH WORSE.
It is estimated that 41% of medical schools in Canada do not include any education on menopause in their undergrad curriculum, according to Canadian Primary Care Today.
That is NOT OKAY! But it’s also not exactly SHOCKING either… after all, Menopause only became a part of the medical field in the 1970s.
So, we already know that we need more education on the subject (both as practitioners AND as patients).
But do we REALLY understand how debilitating it can be for women?
A study released in 2022 called Menopause and the Workplace found that one in ten women leave their jobs because of menopause symptoms.
This might be hard to understand for men – or even for the generations of women before me that had a “put your head down and deal with it” mentality. But, to those women I would counter that the circumstances of our lives are not apples to apples. For example, when my mother had children the age of my kiddos, she was home. She wasn’t in the workplace, building a career, being expected to give 100% at work AND THEN 100% at home.
That isn’t to say that it was EASIER for her; it was just different.
I’ve described the way I feel approx 2.5 weeks of the month as ‘my worst PMS day ever – but on steroids’. Actually, I’d say it’s like puberty’s nasty older sister, whose a real B*TCH!
And, I’m not alone: About 4 in 10 women have mood symptoms during perimenopause that are similar to PMS, or premenstrual syndrome.
Most studies also agree that the risk of depression increases during the peri/meno period.
I am someone who takes medication for ADHD as well as something for hormone related depression, during my ‘painful peri days’, NOTHING touches the despondency that I can find myself in.
SO MUCH FOR IT ‘JUST’ BEING ABOUT HOT FLASHES
But let’s go even further.
There were issues with my body that had me thinking I was ‘broken forever’ after having children. Turns out, I just needed a bit of estrogen cream a couple times a week. It took a couple weeks of that to literally feel like a brand new woman!! I wanted to run through a meadow singing with joy like Julie Andrews
But then I can’t help but feel some BIG FEELINGS over the fact that I struggled with that for 2 years and didn’t even think to mention it to my doctor as anything but a postpartum symptom because, once again: I HAD NO REASON TO THINK IT COULD BE ANYTHING ELSE.
I’ve chatted with many of my girlfriends in their 40s and they have all found themselves frustrated with the emotional, physical, and mental changes that they endured FOR YEARS without answers. The amount of money spent on ‘this supplement’, or ‘that medication’. The countless versions of “rest and exercise will make all the difference” speeches they endured. The days, and weeks, and months, and years wondering what was WRONG with them – not to mention the guilt you carry feeling like you’re not being “enough” for your friends or family.
BUT there is some light at the end of this torturous tunnel
I spoke with Dr. Shawna O’Hearn, the director of Community Partnerships and Global Health in the Faculty of Medicine at Dalhousie. She was instrumental in STARTING the conversation about menopause at Dal, and so many other workplaces (including ours, at Acadia!)
She said that, in her experience, she is seeing a greater awareness, openness and understanding to the issues that women may face – especially in the workplace – when it comes to Menopause. There is a clear need for programs and practices in place that support women in these transformative years as they continue in their career.
She is holding an event in the Fall, that will bring women together to share in our experiences and empower each other through our journey before, during, and after menopause.
I appreciated our conversation so much – not JUST because she gave me some amazing resources (check out The Menopause Society of Nova Scotia ), but also because she gave me a new perspective on this period of my life.
I mentioned how I was feeling like the changes I was going through, and the impact it was having on EVERY aspect of my life, felt almost like a midlife crisis (but instead of a shiny sports car, I got atrophy in my lady bits – fun).
She pointed out that it isn’t a CRISIS, it’s a TRANSFORMATION.
And, maybe, we could benefit from looking at how other cultures CELEBRATE this time in a woman’s life as opposed to our culture’s historical stigmatization of it.
So, with that in mind, I did a bit of googling (regular listeners know: it’s my fave thing to do!)
In Japan, the word for Menopause is “Konenki”
Translated, it means “a period of change”
or
“a season of renewal”
As frustrated as I felt with being blindsided by this stage of life… I like the idea of looking at it as “a season of renewal”.
Because, even with the aspects of myself that I don’t recognize, there are parts of myself emerging that I kind of love: The whole IDGAF persona that I think a lot of women can relate to once they hit a certain age.
But I also like the person I’m becoming for my SELF.
That woman is confident in a bathing suit at the beach, with no cover up, for the first time in DECADES. And it’s not because she ‘finally hit that target weight’, it’s because she’s come to realise that it doesn’t MATTER what she looks like, it MATTERS that she play with her kids in the sand, unencumbered by layers and layers of clothing.
She is better at advocating for herself. She is better at telling someone NO when she wants to. She is (getting) better at prioritizing her needs. She cares less and less what other people think of her.
With this shedding of my old self, I’m discovering this new (better?!) version of ME.
I know I’m just waxing poetic here…but Robert Frost said:
FREEDOM LIES IN BEING BOLD
And, for better or for worse (mostly better, I think), I have NEVER felt more BOLD than I do now, at this time in my life.
When I had my first child, I remember feeling like I was getting to know TWO new people – my new daughter, and the new version of myself.
Once again, I am meeting the new Melody. But it’s not because of a birth – quite the opposite, actually. It IS because of a rebirth (of sorts).
SO, I’m thinking, since we have BABY showers to prepare us for everything we need when a baby is coming, maybe we need to start having no-more-baby showers for the time when our uterus calls it quits?
Instead of burp cloths, we can register for weighted blankets.
Instead of diaper cream, we get copious amounts of Premarin.
Instead of onesies, we get… actually, we still get onesies. That sounds lovely, to be honest.
