Just a random thing I came across today via This Isn't Happiness which led me to a really fun site called I Heart Guts, which it says is inspired by the "intersection of the gross and the cute" and sells cuddly toys of internal organs, including a fabulous cuddly uterus,
and all sorts of other organ related paraphernalia. The above image comes from their 'Periodic Table of your Period' and I just loved the idea of the cuddly uterus getting to throw all those tampons in the bin ... excellent!
So, I'll add the photo when I get my computer back but I am taking a break to write a blog post about magic prescriptions. I know it's been ages since I posted here, that's mainly because nothing much menopausal has been happening. I have still been living in limbo land expecting some kind of 'real' symptoms to start occurring, but they haven't . Then about a month ago I started what I thought was just another ordinary period ... but then it went on, and on, then it seemed to fade out a bit, then it started up again, and went on, and on, until I was feeling a little anxious. I started searching, as you do in the interweb age, for information about my symptoms, reassurance that it was normal menopausal body behaviour. As with everything else on the net there is no consensus on the subject. I promised myself if it didn't stop by the end of the week I was going to see the doctor. The one thing there is consensus on is that if you have weird symptoms it's ok to go and seek a bit of professional advice. I haven't actually seen my doctor since having any menopause symptoms; I mentioned it in passing to the nurse when I went for a 'Well Woman' checkup but she was not prepared to express any opinions and told me to see the doctor if I had any questions, and since it was so vague at the time I didn't bother. So, cut a long story short, I popped along on Monday and was duly reassured, periods that go on and on (and even on and on) are par for the course and not really a cause for concern. Since undoubtedly they were causing me some bother (since blood exiting your body is a real drag we all know) she said she could prescribe me something that would stop it and 'reboot' the system. Even though I was a bit doubtful about messing with my hormones she said she would give it to me so that if I changed my mind in a week I could fill it then. So I duly took home my prescription for Norethisterone, which is taken in a very specific manner: 3 tablets for 3 days, then 2 tablets for 3 days, then 1 tablet for 3 days (by the time you've done all that if it hadn't stopped you would probably have stopped caring anyway, or be due the next one). Anyway Tuesday morning I had lost no more blood overnight and then I had a tiny bit during the day, and it seems to have pretty much stopped today ... and I haven't even bothered to get the prescription filled yet ... that is one very effective treatment if you ask me. Fill me out a prescription for HRT and I'll pin it to the kitchen notice board to keep the hot flushes at bay.
Continuing my series of random references to menopause in literature I have just reviewed 'Wise Children' by Angela Carter and saved this lovely little quote. It seems that sex and having babies gets mentioned regularly in fiction but periods and menopause are still rather a taboo subject, so this rather matter of fact comment by Dora Chance is quite refreshing:
"We started the very same day those two were born, as it happens. Funny coincidence. I went to have a wee and there was the evidence, all over my underwear. I hotfooted it to Nora and she took a look on her own account. Same thing with her. Grandma got us some cotton wool. Although we are asymmetrical, in many ways, we always, funnily enough, came on in unison until we stopped, short, never to go again, the tap turned off just twenty-five years ago." (p.74)
This has been hanging around in my news feed for a while now with the intention of posting it here. Over at Scientific American Kate Clancy (who I have mentioned before, so she must be good) blogs at 'Context and Variation' about "human behaviour, evolutionary medicine ... and ladybusiness." In this article "Lady anthropologist throws up her hands, concedes men are the reason for everything interesting in human evolution" she picks apart of piece of research that looks at the reasons for women having a lifespan that extends beyond their ability to reproduce. Some of it is a bit 'science speak' for me, and you probably need to be a serious student to understand all the references without looking them up, but you can get the gist of the argument:
"Despite citing the overwhelming literature on the topic, these authors situate human menopause as an “evolutionary puzzle.” They then point out that a model that recognizes male mating preferences for younger women, with a splash of infertility-causing mutations, produces the evolution of menopause. What this suggests is that if men choose to mate with younger women, female-specific, infertility-causing mutations that affect later reproduction could build up, since those women aren’t reproducing. Ergo, the uselessness and undesirability of older women – we all know how that is – leads to their becoming infertile and menopausal."
"I used to think that part of the reason humans are menopausal may not be because menopause serves a particular purpose, but because we have extended lifespans. We may have extended lifespans not because longevity is selected for, but because longer periods of childhood and social learning were selected for."
"Before my revelation that the men are all who matter, I would have also favored the grandmother hypothesis. This hypothesis isn’t mutually exclusive with the others. Originally the grandmother hypothesis contended that post-reproductive life evolved because grandmothers are important to the reproductive success of their offspring (Hawkes 2003; Hawkes et al. 1998; Hawkes et al. 1997)."
She uses her argument to also pick fault with the sexism and cultural bias that exists within this academic sphere and concludes:
"So really, even if men had little to do with menopause, they get… well, they get pretty much everything else, so long as you whiz by several decades of egalitarian anthropology research. Which is fun, like roller skating!"
The comments section is just as interesting as the article, where several male commenters miss the point altogether. It is interesting to know that there are so many people out there concerned with the whys and wherefores of menopause. I'll just go back to quietly menopausing now.
I read 'The Hours' by Michael Cunningham over the weekend, a wonderful book capturing the lives of three very different women, and made a note of this small passage. I liked it because it is just a nodding acknowledgment of the ageing process (Kitty is the friend and neighbour of Laura Brown):
"Kitty looks at her coffee cup with elaborately false, foolish absorption. She seems, briefly, like a simple, ordinary woman seated at a kitchen table. Her magic evaporates; it is possible to see how she'll look at fifty - she'll be fat, mannish, leathery, wry and ironic about her marriage, one of those women of whom people say, She used to be quite pretty, you know." (p.107)
Another into a brief foray into literature. From Howards End by E. M. Forster, this is a description of Jacky Bast; I don't think she is strictly a menopausal woman being only in her thirties, but it is about the judgements that are made of women as they age. I won't quote the whole gory description of her appearance, described as 'not respectable' but 'awesome', from the boa, to the pearls, to the cheap lace and the flowery hat, but here is how it concludes:
"It was the face of the photograph, but older, and the teeth were not so numerous as the photographer had suggested, and certainly not so white. Yes, Jacky was past her prime, whatever that prime may have been. She was descending quicker than most women into the colourless years, and the look in her eyes confessed it." (p.49)
Via a recommendation on Facebook I arrived yesterday evening at this article entitled 'The Bitch is Back' by Sandra Tsing Loh that argues wonderfully that menopause is in fact a return to a more normal emotional/psychological/hormonal state and not some kind of aberration. She begins by lambasting the vast majority of menopause literature that plugs away at the 'problem' but then she arrives at 'The Wisdom of Menopause' by Christiane Northrup and has an epiphany.
I'll quote for you here what she refers to as the juicy core of the argument:
"A woman once told me that when her mother was approaching the age of menopause, her father sat the whole family down and said, “Kids, your mother may be going through some changes now, and I want you to be prepared. Your Uncle Ralph told me that when your Aunt Carol went through the change, she threw a leg of lamb right out the window!” Although this story fits beautifully into the stereotype of the “crazy” menopausal woman, it should not be overlooked that throwing the leg of lamb out the window may have been Aunt Carol’s outward expression of the process going on within her soul: the reclaiming of self. Perhaps it was her way of saying how tired she was of waiting on her family, of signaling to them that she was past the cook/chauffeur/dishwasher stage of life. For many women, if not most, part of this reclamation process includes getting in touch with anger and, perhaps, blowing up at loved ones for the first time."
She describes the fertile phase of a woman's life as having been under a hormonal cloud of nurturing and the explanation for the supposed crazy behaviour is:
"And now that Aunt Carol’s hormonal cloud is finally wearing off, it’s not a tragedy, or an abnormality, or her going crazy—it just means she can rejoin the rest of the human race: she can be the same selfish, non-nurturing, non-bonding type of person everyone else is."
It was interesting because I had observed this myself; not only in the lack of broodiness that had plagued my adult life since the age of about 18 but also a sense of release from responsibility for taking care of people. It has coincided with my children reaching adulthood so I had not interpreted it that way but on reflection it seems to fit. Yes, I feel suddenly more selfish, occasionally feeling a bit like I am being self-indulgent to spend my time attending to my own interests rather than those of other people, but quite enjoying it nonetheless.
Bits of the article I found irritating in the way I often do because of the assumptions it makes about 'middle class' women's lives and the route they follow. I have not had a career and had my children young (all born by the time I was thirty). I am not experiencing the "clanging chime of her 10-year-old voice, note by note, draining your will to live" because now I can just try and relate to my children as adults. And this whole description of the life of a 50 something woman has absolutely nothing that I relate to:
"A third, related, survival tip is to have no shame. The middle-aged women I know, clawing their way one day at a time through this passage, have no rules—they glue themselves together with absolutely anything they can get their hands on. They do estrogen cream, progesterone biocompounds, vaginal salves, coffee in the morning, big sandwiches at lunch. They drink water all day, they work out twice a week, hard, with personal trainers. They take Xanax to get over the dread of seeing their personal trainers, they take Valium to settle themselves before the first Chardonnay of happy hour. They may do with just a half a line of coke before a very small martini, while knitting and doing some crosswords. If there are cigarettes and skin dryness, there are also collagen and Botox, and the exhilaration of flaming an ex on Facebook. And finally, as another woman friend of mine counseled with perfect sincerity and cheer: “Just gain the 25 pounds. I really think I would not have survived menopause—AND the death of my mother—without having gained these 25 pounds.” "
but all in all I found the article enlightening and very amusing, I was annoying Dunk by giggling and not explaining myself as I always demand he does when he finds something amusing on the interweb. So hop on over and feel a bit better about the process, and maybe try and relish the return to normality instead.
(Image credit Ellen Weinstein from The Atlantic)
Returning to the theme of the portrayal of older women in literature I have been reading 'Swimming Home' by Deborah Levy and came across this quote. It refers to the elderly Madeleine Sheridan:
"She screamed at the waiter for a whiskey and a Pepsi for Jurgen, who disliked alcohol for spiritual reasons. It was hard for an old woman to get a waiter's attention when he was busy serving topless women in thongs. She had read about yogic siddhas who mastered human invisibility through a combination of concentration and meditation. Somehow she had managed to make her body imperceptible to the waiter without any of the training." (p.74)
(Photo from trip to Dartmoor with mum and dad)
Maybe it's just the winter but I can't be bothered to get out of bed, even when I'm hungry, so I am relying on the box of jelly babies on the bedside table to sustain me.
Had my first period for months over christmas, heavy and painful, lasted nearly a fortnight. New menopausal symptoms include lethargy, apathy, disinterest, boredom, and general can't-be-botheredness. Couldn't even be bothered with a new year resolution; I want to let myself sink into the slump and brood about it. I still have little bursts of enthusiasm and energy but they seem to tail off very quickly. See ... I've lost interest in writing this post already.
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