More ick, probably tmi

[zappo]

Well, at least all this menstruating is good for the figure. Like Cordelia said in an early episode of ”Buffy” when they found a headless corpse. It’s so disgusting I completely lose my appetite.

I thought menopause would mean less bleeding, not more and more until it is pretty much constant. And no one wants to talk about it, understandably, see above about unappetising. All I’ve ever heard is coy remarks about heat flushes. I would love having one of those, what bliss not to be icy cold all the time.

Oh boy how I hate it. Must try to think about something else but am unable to.

What luck there are audio stories to divert nasty thoughts! After having listened to an old Swedish recording of ”Dickie Dick Dickens” which was great I’ve now started on the HPLHS complete Lovecraft audiobook. Mmmm, lovely...

And ”The Navy Lark” is great fun too. I’ll never look at the Third Doctor in the same way again!

Comments

[therru]

I shall not be coy!
I started out by getting very irregular bleeding (and more frequent), before it kind of stopped. Well, "stopped" -- I got one every six months or so. Then I really started getting the hot flushes (I'd only had occasional ones before). And let me tell you, mine were not really a toasty, warm, pleasant feeling. More like a geysir, you could feel it slowly rising until the pressure got too high, and then everything felt like you were having an attack fever, and sweat started spurting out through EVERY. SINGLE. PORE. Now I'm voluntarily back to bleeding once a month... yeah, menopause was a huge disappointment.
I'm really annoyed that it's so hard to find sensible info on menopause and perimenopause anywhere. Everything I could find was all about how to deal with your husband and teenage kids as a menopausal mom. Fuck that!

[zappo]

So it _can_ get even worse :( Ugh! The only info I’ve had so far is the unhelpful library book you just described there, and the gynecologist saying yes, massive near-constant bleeding is not uncommon plus it can last until you’re 60. By which point I started feeling really depressed.

Maybe there are discussion groups about this somewhere but I don’t want the internets to know all about me if I search for it. It’s bad enough when FB sends ads about things I’ve only thought about!

[therru]

Some people have it really easy. You know, it's like with menstruation, some girls bleed a few drops for three days or so, and never experience any pain or pms... While some of us seem to have got the short end of the stick. I personally tend to feel that the female reproductive system is the greatest argument against the idea of Intelligent Design...

The flip side of constant bleeding, i.e. no bleeding at all, can, conversely, mean that your uterine lining keeps growing without ever being shed, which can lead to a bunch of other problems. :\

I don't mind discussing this at all, I find it very surprising that the available info on this is so useless, unhelpful and bad! Also that Swedish health care seems to be completely uninterested in this subject, or in helping women with worse-than-average symptoms. I finally found a gyn who prescribed HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy, i.e. oestrogen supplements), and now I can actually sleep most of the night without a bath towel in my bed.

I don't want to scare you, though, some people only have some light problems for a couple of years or so, and some sail right through it.

There is a book called "Kaos i kvinnohjärnan" by Mia Lundin, a Swedish nurse working in the US, that I found somewhat helpful, at least in explaining some of the processes. I found it at the library. You just have to keep in mind that she wants to sell in her own program and treatment supplements (which are all, of course, ridiculously expensive), but she does have some good points about the way the health system tends to fail women of a certain age, and why.

Anyway, feel free to bombard me with this stuff if you feel like it. I've managed to talk to a few people about it, so I'm not as much of a n00b as I once was.

[therru]

Oh, and also: Now that I'm taking both Levaxin and HRT, I'm actually generally less freezing cold than I used to be. I don't know which one of them is responsible for that, or if my housing company has just turned the heat up or something...

[zappo]

What, no freezing?! /insert Alfred E Neuman face here/

Do you know, FB has already started feeding me menopause ads... I'd much rather have cute/funny animal videos.

[therru]

I think that's kind of inevitable as soon as FB knows that you are female and around fifty. :\

I cheat on FB, using adblock and interest lists, so I evade those ads. Naturally, because we can't be allowed to not be a product, they removed the option of creating those lists a while ago, but I had saved the links for two of them, so I can still use those. Up yours, FB.