Breathe
By Mariana Conde
The gynecologist makes eights with her ultrasound machine on my abdomen and tells me what my body has been shouting at me for months: Ah no, woman! There's nothing here anymore. And although the official inauguration of my menopause will technically be twelve months after the last period, she confirms that there is nothing more to wait, this factory has already closed without any need for any protocol. Nothing to do, forget about spending on Kotex, with that money invest in a fan, she tells me with her sticky Colombian accent. I also understand that together with certain discomforts I have entered the most ruca stage of my life: in order not to turn on the internal boiler he recommends not to drink, not to smoke, not to eat sugar, dairy products or stay awake, the only funny thing that is allowed is the last thing I crave these days, much to the dismay of my bed partner. It's a phase, it will pass, when? That is unknown, it can last from one to two hundred years... Me, I don't want to hear more na' and I just feel that suddenly they turned off the air conditioning in the office.
While this news comes as no surprise to me, it somehow seals the lid on the coffin of my reproductive years; I ponder whether I should have a farewell ceremony, but the cheese bread and wine gathering I'm craving has suddenly become incompatible with my new post-meno diet.
I celebrate by filling myself with information. I look for a different angle and decide to ask this question to Google's parvular artificial intelligence which I discover takes things very literally:
Is menopause funny? No, menopause is not funny, but it can bring with it a series of symptoms that can affect the quality of life of women, blah, blah, blah, blah, and she starts listing the different annoyances that I suffer from day in and day out.
Nothing new, but it seems to me at least more honest than the English version which, already imbued with the woke culture, reiterates that, indeed, it is not funny and must be "honored": No, menopause is not funny, and it's important to understand and honor it.
What?! Or rather, Net?
The truth is that I would like to do many things with menopause, such as sending it to the ranch of a certain former president, annihilate it, postpone it and other more diabolical things, but surely not to honor it; it is not a flag, anthem or nation, although at times it seems that I am banished in it for the rest of eternity and that the only compatriots who understand me are the other menopausal women.
In fact, that's something else I'd like to do, change the term menopausal that is used as one more projectile in the arsenal of mockery, aggression, condescension or nullification against women, even by those of the same gender who are in another, not necessarily previous, stage of life (I could have sworn my mom called me that this summer after a heated argument when she thought I wasn't listening, but it was July in Merida...).
Old menopausal was the worst insult we could think of in high school for a grumpy teacher, for any lady who would call you to attention in the supermarket for munching on all the avocados or honk at you in traffic while you were curling your eyelashes.
It turns out that now you are that lady. So what to do about it?
In fact, I know there are women who welcome it, want to leave menstrual discomfort aside and no longer have to worry about an unwanted pregnancy, although they never know how they will get it. I am not one of them; I accept it as an inevitable part of life and understand that each stage has its richness, but I recognize it as a sign of decline and I would prefer a thousand days of menstruation to one of hot flashes.
Father Garcia, revered presbyter of Yucatecan society, famous for his soporific sermons dictated without moving his lips and sprinkled with reprimands for anyone who failed to follow the protocol of the mass(boy in gray you are coming, the mass began at 5:30; girls, here we do not come dismantled, it is not disco; ladies in row three stop whispering) had a favorite saying speaking of carnal sins: man is fire, the woman is rope; the devil comes and blows.
How I think of that image lately, only there's no man or stew, it's me suffocating in my own fire with some damn devil out there whipping it up with a blowing bellows.
The best way I have to describe an embarrassment is like this: you're quiet, writing, or helping your daughter with homework, maybe unpacking the groceries and suddenly, poof! you turn on a pilot light that you didn't know you had in the back of your neck and in milliseconds you are already sweating: the inside of your elbows, the corvas of your knees, the space between your chichis and of course that section where your thighs rub together -because at this age they rub together, let's not get carried away- that is, any point where the sweat instantly becomes sticky and particularly unpleasant. This heat is impressively efficient, faster than a laser or a microwave; I think someday a genius will figure out how to make use of this power generation as a replacement for solar panels. Then, almost as quickly as it arrived it's gone, but there you are left obfuscated and sweaty with your head in frozen icebergs and bubulubus with no memory of what the hell you were doing five minutes before.
But it doesn't end there, that infernal instant can repeat itself as many times as it wants at the whim of the thermal sensation, amount of caffeine or sugar consumed, hours of sleep, level of stress and in general, the degree of annoyance of the day. The icing on the cake is that a favorite time for hot flashes -and its partner cortisol- is somewhere between two and four in the morning when we should be oscillating between the stages of sleep; if anyone discovers how to follow the great advice of oh, go back to sleep, please leave it in the comments.
In the battles for the temperature in my room, the sides have been exchanged, in the middle of winter I put the fan on despite wearing pajama shorts while my husband, freezing, turns it down when I manage to fall asleep. I won't talk about other kinds of bedroom battles but it is well known that this is not the sexiest period of life either. Much is made of the itchiness of the seventh year, but the hives of menopause seem no lesser to me.
Perhaps the most emblematic symptom is the aforementioned mood swings that have been exaggerated so much and are in a category of their own in comedy. In reality, there is nothing comical about what happens and it goes something like this: the decrease in the production of estrogen and progesterone in menopause can affect the levels of serotonin, the hormone in charge of communication between neurons and the rest of the body. Serotonin is crucial, it is involved in memory, body temperature, sleep, hunger, sexual appetite and, of course, mood... anyone check? Sir, you read on too, I'm talking about your wife.
If we add to that perfect storm that the average age at which women start having children continues to increase, we are headed for a perverse scenario that, like me, many of us are living today: facing menopause at the age when your grandmother was already a grandmother but when you are the mother of children who still don't know how to add. Try to go over the three times table with a seven year old blessing -which is your son, there's no one to beat- on a record temperature afternoon in May when waiting for the answer to 3 x 7 you are hit by an inner fire that almost blurs your vision with mirages that oscillate between a pool of ice and your hands on the baby's neck, that's more or less how it feels to be a menopausal mother. The great advantage for these children, because God squeezes but does not hang, is that you never chase them to wear sweaters or pants instead of shorts, in your body it is always summer and as everyone knows, children live under the mandates of the matriarchal temperature.
Joking aside, there are many other potential effects with more delicate health consequences that can range from gynecological and gastric problems to thyroid disease, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and clinical depression.
Being this a considerable milestone that we will all go through it seems incredible that it still takes most women and our male partners by surprise, and I mention them because this is an issue that affects both of us and that we ignore at our own risk. It's like death, deep down we know it will come but one doesn't want to think about it too much and is never prepared, only in the case of menopause we can and it pays to be better informed. I am not saying that being informed will help us to fight menopause, it will come, it will come, but it can help us to cope with it better.
Fortunately, the almost taboo status in which the subject was buried has changed radically in the last decade and it is now being talked about more openly. More and more is known about how the endocrine system and hormones work and this information is available on the internet, social networks and the accounts of countless people who specialize in the subject. I am no expert, but I know from trial and error that I can have a better day if I don't drink coffee, eat healthy by avoiding sugar, alcohol and gluten and get my hours of sleep. There are also different supplements that can help depending on the case of each person and certain checkups for everyone after 40 and others after 50, your doctor will be able to tell you what they are. In my case, I have been doing my annual mammogram and pap smear for some time and I had not thought of having a densitometry test; when I did it because it was part of my insurance checkup I was surprised, but I was able to start taking care of my bone health on time.
A preeminent aspect on which medical information and opinion has changed a lot is hormone replacement therapy. Following a study done in 2002 it was demonized and linked to effects such as increased incidence of cancer and cardiovascular events. Now we know from multiple subsequent investigations that this study had design flaws that affect its conclusions and many agree that hormone replacement therapy has more advantages than disadvantages in women's health, although of course each case must be evaluated individually and there are people with risk factors, history and comorbidities that we are not candidates to receive it. There are also better alternatives such as bioidentical hormones, vs. the old synthetic hormones. To learn more about this topic there is an excellent podcast from The New York Times that you can find here: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/12/podcasts/the-daily/menopause-treatment-hormone-therapy.html
The truth is that, to a greater or lesser degree, menopause is a drag. It is not a disease, but it is more of a nuisance than some, and we never know how it will affect us or how long it will be with us. There is nowhere to hide and it seems to me that it is worthwhile to learn to manage it as best as possible so that its impact on our quality of life is a little milder and not let it drive us and those around us crazy. Maybe even to avoid anyone yelling at us in the old menopausal traffic.
The opinions expressed are the responsibility of the authors and are absolutely independent of the position and editorial line of the company. Opinion 51.
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