Right Itchy Chuff

And other middle-age stuff I was NOT expecting! A far too personal over-share about all things menopause...

Yup… It’s worse than I ever imagined, this thing they call menopause… Yikes!!

Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash

I mean seriously, as if growing old and saggy, watching everything slowly head south and seeing lines appear in places you never thought to worry about wasn’t bad enough! Then we have to deal with this god awful nightmare that makes us hotter than the Sahara without warning and sends us into random shouting frenzies, leaving your poor unsuspecting family wondering if you have indeed undergone a drastic and rather frightening personality transplant in the night!

Who knew these influxes of hormones, or lack there of, could have such a dramatic effect on the female body? People do try to warn us about it, like when they try to warn us about having babies… do we listen… do we fuck! “They must be exaggerating” we say “It can’t be that bad, surely” we say “Maybe they’ve just been really unlucky” we say… Oh, how wrong we were!

Never did I ever in my wildest dreams think that the onset of a “hot flush” (or is it ‘flash’ - that one still confuses me) would give me anything more than the urge to remove a layer of clothing and maybe fan myself with the nearest menu or letter. What I did NOT expect, and was therefore completely blind-sided by, when the first of these poker-hot attacks on the blood stream ensued, was the urge to remove not one item of clothing, oh no, I wanted to remove ALL of the items of clothing! Not only that… I also needed to find the nearest supply of ice and rub it all over my 'boiling-from-the-inside’ towering inferno of a body! And that, my friends, was in the middle of winter!!

Whilst we’re hovering around the subject of being hot and sweaty, I cannot continue without mentioning the bastard “night sweats”. Another of the better known “joys” of menopause. Oh what a wonderful feeling it is to wake up completely drenched and stuck to the sheets, thinking for a very brief moment that I might have actually pissed myself! It’s no wonder this can be the first thought that springs to one’s mind, due to the shear volume of wetness… I mean I’m not just talking a little bit damp here, we’re talking full on wet sheets, pillow AND duvet… the full hat trick! As if life isn’t busy enough without the now pressing need to re-shower (I’m an evening shower kind of gal - or at least I was). Then there’s the bedding… I mean, if you live alone, I guess you can just leave it to air dry during the day, as you’re only going to get back in and drench it again anyway. But if you share the bed, let’s assume a change is necessary - Great ANOTHER BASTARD JOB TO ADD TO THE NEVER-FUCKING-ENDING LIST OF SHIT TO DO!! WONDERFUL!!

This brings me nicely onto my next ‘symptom’… RAGE!! Or perhaps a nicer and less scary way to say it would be “Emotional Outbursts”… although I’m pretty sure feeling like you want to drop kick the cat over the fence might be a little worse than that. It’s not always so extreme, and of-course everybody is different and I am only reporting on my own personal experience. Don’t worry, I would never actually kick my cat! However, I thought it was important to share honestly, just in case someone else thinks (like I did) that they might be going a little bit nuts! These hormones really can mess with your melon, especially as it was sooooooo long ago since they last played havoc like this. I am of-course talking about the oily, smelly awkward stage of life we know as puberty. Which I now realise was a minor blip compared to this onslaught of extreme mood swings, sweat baths and oven visits! Oh, and dry itchy vaginas!

Yup, this was a surprising one to me. I’d heard about “vaginal dryness” and been subjected to the awkward adverts where actors try to act like it’s completely normal to fly into the middle of your living room and talk about dry vaginas in front of your friends and family! Luckily for me I haven’t encountered this issue, not yet anyway, but the itchiness… what is that all about?! And, no it’s not thrush or any of the other myriad of irritating bacteria that can end up festering between your beef curtains (sorry!). It seems it’s totally random and can come and go (like other things that enter the vagina) at the drop of a hat. There seems to be no rhyme or reason, other than your tired old flaps occasionally (and without warning) become itchier than a thousand mosquito bites, requiring you to rub them harder than Aladin’s lamp immediately and without delay!

Last but not least, there is the temporary but frighteningly frequent “amnesia” that ensues in hot, sweaty middle-aged women the world over. As if we need another thing to aggravate that small problem with rage that we’re battling already, we are then met with the additional issue of our brains leaking information! Names of people, places, appliances and other every-day objects have temporarily slipped through the holes of our sieve brains. Along with appointment dates, meeting times or the fact that you have a third child you were meant to collect from art club half an hour ago!! But of-course you didn’t hear the phone ring when the art teacher called, because you left it in the freezer last time you were there, as an alternative to removing ALL OF THE CLOTHES!!!! Ffs!! 🙄

Photo by Sergey Pesterev on Unsplash

Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. Let me know in the comments ❤️