Last week I reached the one-year anniversary since my last menstruation period.
This means I am officially out of perimenopause and into actual menopause.
YAY!
I went into perimenopause when I was thirty-nine. Twenty-three years ago.
Ouch.
My doctor at the time told me that it was impossible for me to be in perimenopause because I was too young. Never mind the fact that I was having night sweats, hot flashes, and my internal thermometer was completely broken. (We were living in Arizona at the time. I remember it being 110 F outside. I was sitting on our porch wearing a sweater and wrapped in a blanket, unable to get warm. Then, other times, sitting on the couch with the AC on full blast and still sweating buckets.)
My brain had kind of started to disappear as well. That was when I started doing watercolor painting because the words weren’t there for the writing.
Fast forward to five years later, when I’m in Seattle and my symptoms have progressively gotten worse. When my period arrived, I would sit in my condo with the shades drawn, for three days, crying.
That wasn’t me. After the second time, I went to get help.
I found a naturopath who specialized in women’s hormones. I’d read books about hormones and menopause and knew that I was in perimenopause.
Fortunately, he turned out to be utterly fabulous. He asked me what I knew about bioidentical hormones. I pulled out the books I’d read and started talking about them.
He laughed and pulled out a folder he’d brought with him. It was full of photocopies of sections from those very books I’d read. He didn’t believe in giving a woman hormones until she had educated herself on them.
It took a while to dial in the hormones, to figure out what the correct dosage was for my body. The dosage that he’d prescribed was way too much. I took half of that.
I take my hormones sublingually, under my tongue, twice a day. Can’t take them too early in the morning or they interfere with my thyroid medication. Can’t take them for at least fifteen minutes after eating or drinking, then can’t eat or drink for at least fifteen minutes.
So they’re a thing. Took me some time to just get used to the schedule of them as well.
I’ve continued to take bioidentical hormones (also referred to as hormone replacement therapy or HRT). I am still taking hormones. My naturopath said I’ll take them for life, even though both he and I agree that one of the reasons why I had so many years of perimenopause was because I was taking hormones.
Some women can wean themselves off hormones after they finally reach menopause. We’ll see. We tried weaning me off the hormones the year before last. I ended up having almost continual hot flashes, one every thirty minutes or so, when my hormone levels got too low.
I do feel as if my hormones are finally settling down. Oh, they still sometimes get uppity. Couple of weeks ago they flared up, and I had a bad day. Brain dead, unhappy, and caffeine made it worse.
When my hormones get uppity, caffeine works as a somnolent. During perimenopause, eight-five to ninety percent of the time, caffeine worked as a stimulant. However, ten to fifteen percent of the time, it would put me to sleep. As in, “I can no longer keep my eyes open and am about to fall out of my chair” sort of immediate sleep.
At this point, I’d say that ninety-eight percent of the time, caffeine works as it should.
I don’t get hot flashes anymore. Not really. I still have difficulty controlling my temperature sometimes. At night, though, I think those are cortisol spikes, not hormones.
I still have hormone-induced anxiety. Last year sometime, I stopped taking the lavender pill that I take every day to control it. (https://amzn.to/494UySV) That turned out to be a mistake. Maybe later this year I’ll try it again, though, as my hormones continue to settle down.
I’m happy to have finally reached menopause. It honestly does feel like I’ve unlocked this elusive achievement.
We’ll see how my body continues to change as the years go on. Maybe I will be able to wean myself all the way off hormones. Or possibly not.
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