Hot flashes

Tell me about it!
No one ever told me it would be like this.
When my mother started having them, in the late 1960s, I was living out of the country. And aunts and grandmothers were worlds away. Anyway, in those days it wasn't talked about, as far as I know, certainly not in Europe.
And I was only in my twenties, with middle age and menopause subjects too far from now.

So now, for my daughter in her twenties, a thought to tuck away somewhere and remember for thirty years on. It's not so much the burning and the volcanic eruptions, sweat trickling down the face and neck, running down the back and between the breasts, only relieved by removal of garments until the skin is deliciously free and the damp evaporates...

Although the heat is bad enough, what's really disgusting is the nausea. IT got to fine-tune a coming sweat, from the minutes of sickness before. I must admit it was months before I made the connection. How poor I'd grown at listening to my body.
But once I twigged, it became a warning sign, as well as a relief to know it didn't mean I was going to throw up any minute.

What is my body up to? I wondered. Thinking about it now, I realise went on for years. At one point I started on the pill once more, and then just had slight nausea when I stopped every three weeks, for the expected period (which always came). But by the time I turned 55, I decided it was time to stop the pill, and wait for my periods finish. That's when the hot flashes returned.

Sometimes as often as every 20 minutes, waking me all through night, forcing me to change my dress habits (had to wear sleeveless cotton tops even in winter, with a cardigan for the intervals between flashes when I did feel the chilly English cold).

Changing my eating habits too. Often the slightly nauseous feeling would hover in the background for half an hour or more, so all I wanted was to drink.

It made me very tired, and if I wasn't careful had me depressed. With the sick feeling went a sense of hopelessness and unloveliness. Happily, it never lasted too long and I was even able to tell myself -- in the mist of fever or sweating discomfort -- that it would soon pass. I didn't want to get boring, moaning on to my friends about it, or absorbed by something I figured was transitory.

I worked hard on telling my body I still loved it, even though it was changing into a new caterpillar. I was very lucky in having a job that allowed me to sleep in the morning if I'd had a disturbed night. And I told myself never to feel guilty. When I started HRT I thought all my troubles would be solved.

But improvement was excruciatingly slow. The weeks passed and the flashes continued. But then I noticed they were becoming very short. Then I would have a day with hardly any nausea. It is grey February and in wintry twilight a blackbird sings. How glad I shall be when this is over. Light at the end of the tunnel.

My dear daughters, I don't know what it will be like for you. My sister, a couple of years older than me, says she hasn't had any hot flashes. Clearly, everyone's different. A happy moment was when I was talking to my student tenants, and saying what a bane I found these flashes to me. Oh yes, they responded, my mother's had a lot of trouble, they wake her in the night.

Oh unknown sharer in the misery of middle age, welcome, be comforted, we are not alone. And what's more, I can write about it and talk about it, and work out solutions for unpleasantness. Who wants to feel disgusting? Like a hole in the head, as my father would have said. He took suffering of any kind - seriously.