Is it just me or...

Episode fifty

Hello lovelies!

I’m in a mixed-up, mad, menopausal meltdown at the moment (AGAIN!!), and you, you lucky chickens, get to hear all about it!

There’s a bunch of teabags over there, the kettle’s hot, and I think there’s some leftover chocolate Anzac biscuits on the bench; please help yourself while I quiver in this little mound of menopausal mess I’m in.

I wrote once before about the ‘joys’ of this time of life -

- and found it therapeutic to write how I was feeling. It gave quite a few of you a good chuckle, and if we can laugh while our bodies are decomposing, it can only be a good thing, right?

Right?

So this year has been quite the ride, and not just with regards to my flailing hormones. Have you ever had a Really Big Year in your life, and thought to yourself, ‘well, thank goodness that one’s over!’ and then the next year is even more biggerer? That’s me!

<Just a note. I will be discussing things of a ‘delicate’ nature in this post (i.e. women’s bits) so if you’re the least bit squeamish about icky things like that, now’s your chance to go and doomscroll instead. Otherwise, hang onto your potatoes Dr Jones (as stated by the character Short Round in the beginning scenes of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom). There may also be random rambling. Just sayin’>

Photo by Stefano Pollio on Unsplash

One of the other joys that ‘women of my age’ (what? Thirty two? *laughs nervously*) can expect, especially if you’ve had at least one child, is a prolapse. It’s one of those misnomers, I think. It sounds like you were once good at something (pro), but you’ve lapsed, you stink at that task now. What it does mean is that basically some part of your nether regions is trying to get to daylight through … well … down there.

At least one in three, and up to half the population of women will experience this problem in one way or another. There are different levels of prolapsedness, ranging from ‘sometimes I have problems having a wee’, to ‘why is there a chandelier hanging from my nether regions?’ Some women are completely oblivious to the fact that they have one, and others, like myself, are jolly well aware of it thankyouverymuch.

It’s different for every woman - and this is probably why we were ignored a few generations ago, and told to get back in the kitchen and cook dinner. I won’t go through the list of icky things one might experience, but mine can be quite draining and painful at times.

Because my girly bits have had a bit of a battering over the years (big babies, hysterectomy, etc) I kind of dismissed the pain as something to do with all of that. But it ain’t, and I shan’t go into details about how I discovered I had a prolapse either. (A collective PHEW shudders out from SubstackLand)

Our public health system here in Australia is great, but it does teach us to be patient. My GP booked me in with the local public hospital gyno department, and the appointment would be anywhere from 1 to 365 days later. I love specificity!

Anyway, my appointment came a lot earlier than I thought it would, and before you could say hold my handbag, I found myself on an examination bed, flat on my back, padded stirrups splaying my legs out like a clothes line, and three women examining me.

There are many things one can think about at this time while someone rummages around in your privates with a speculum. I was thinking about how to rearrange my bookshelves, what herbs I should grow this year, and about the fabulous trip I’d just had to Tasmania.

The very lovely gyno then announced I had a cystocele (look it up if you want) and wondered aloud if I did pelvic floor exercises.

Pelvic floor exercises?

Photo by Carl Barcelo on Unsplash

I remember learning how to do those at a pre-natal class for my first son. Pretend you’re trying to stop a wee mid-stream (I told you this would get icky) and hold it for a few seconds, then let go, and repeat ten times. Now, this might be all fine and dandy when you’re young and springy, but when things have become a little brittle and mummified down there, it’s not as easy. Stopping a wee midstream these days is like trying to hold back Niagara Falls with a teaspoon.

Anyway, the gyno suggested I start doing them again (JOY!!) and then gave me a prescription for a hormonal pessary.

OMG.

Seriously?

Every night now I have to put oestrogen cream into this ‘applicator’ (large plastic pen), then take a deep, deep, deep breath, and insert the applicator into my body, until it’s sitting about ten centimetres from my left armpit. Then simply leave the blob of cream there, extricate myself from myself, trudge out to the bathroom to wash all the bits of the applicator in hot soapy water, then run back to bed and pretend it never happened.

Photo by Carla Luca de Tena on Unsplash

Ugh.

Why are we, who are blessed with the honour of giving life, of having kids, of filling the earth with humankind, then cursed as those same life-giving bits start to shrivel up, back-fire, and collapse? The world turns its collective back on us, we become, quite literally, invisible, and now I’m doing pelvic floor ‘exercises’ when I’m doing the grocery shopping.

Two tins of crushed tomatoes - hold the stream - freeze and pretend to read the ingredients - relax and put the tin in the trolley. Select some Spanish kidney beans - lift up that pelvic floor! - read the tin and pretend you care about the saturated fat content and the 7.2g of dietary fibre - relax and put it back on the shelf. And on it goes.

Hot flushes? Oh yeah, those babies are still visiting me with vexing regularity, however it’s mostly at night now. When I go to bed, I’m all tucked in like a little enchilada, my merino doona weighed on me like a splodge of warm, cheese sauce, dreams of fanciful nonsense just on the edge of my peripheral, when

BAM!!

I’m in a top-notch commercial oven set at six millions degrees, and my doona is like molten lava.

FLING! That thing is gone, I’m untucked, sheets are everywhere, pillows across the room, as I steam quietly in a starfish shape, my hair plastered to my neck, trying to remain calm and not jump up and smash through the window and run out into the chilly night air.

Photo by Aiste Katkute on Unsplash

Then the feeling passes, as it always does, and I try to reassemble my bed, scrape back those fanciful dreams, and drop off into blissful oblivion.

Is this ‘cream’ (ugh) helping? I don’t know. I can’t tell. My life is so very full and complicated right now, I could probably get hit by a bus and not realise.

As I ended my last post about the mires of menopause, the only thing that keeps me sane is the knowledge that, ‘this too, shall pass’. One day I will be in a very different place, both literally and figuratively, and I’ll look back on all this nonsense and see how it made me a better person.

Or, I might be living in a cave in the mountains somewhere subsisting on celery grass or something, who knows?

Stay tuned to find out!

Maggie xx