Yes! This is a question that many of us will have to ponder when confronted with  some of the affects of menopause, whether that be hot-flashes, moodiness or anxiety attacks.

Many women go on some type of hormone therapy to help them to cope with their Physical and emotional situation. These take on many forms, pills, patches, creams and more!  You will quickly discover that not everything works for everybody! You will have to pick and choose what you are willing to experiment with, or not!

Doctors, friends and acquaintances, will all be well meaning as they bombard you with remedies, cures, potions and the, “This is the best thing EVER”! To relieve you of your new found symptoms. Do your homework on anything you are thinking about trying, there are side effects and risks involved with many these meds. Other women may veer more toward the natural or homeopathic, but as with everything else, I stress again, what may work for one person, may not work for you.  Example, when I first started having my anxiety attacks, someone I knew recommended that I use this estrogen cream, all you had to do was rub some on your inner arms and breast, OMG! That stuff made me so wacky! Needless to say, I had to stop using it after a couple of weeks. Wasn’t for me.  Fast forward about 10 years later. I’m deep into dealing  with these (thinking face) who left me out here in the middle of the desert, hot-flashes! One of my friends was on estrogen and it worked very well for her, not only that! But I had a few clients that were on the estrogen patch, they too sang praises on how if it weren’t for that patch! They didn’t know what they would do! They said it saved them, and their families from the ugly person they had become due to the hormonal imbalance caused by the menopause.  And to top it all off, my new doctor recomended the low dose estrogen pill for me too, he said, “Whats the harm in trying it? it could be the very thing you need to help you.” So here is yet another person telling me about this stuff! And after ten years of suffering with menopausal symptoms, I gave in to trying estrogen. I was on it for three weeks before I had to come off, it was HORRIBLE for me! I had all kinds of crazy side affects! light headedness, a constant dull headache and pain in my lower legs that would bother me in my sleep, and while sitting down, it was not nice! Unbelievable! I was really hoping for the best (sad face) I was never really a western medicine type person, I kind of lean more toward the natural,  but that’s just me! Doesn’t make the other stuff  wrong for someone else, just not right for me. So the ball is in your court, Pill, Patch, Cream or Nothing?

Hot! Hot! Hot!

OMG!!!!!! Who turned the HEAT up in here!
Can we talk about these hot flashes! Who thought it was a good idea to put FIRE! Inside The human body? SERIOUSLY! How can I even begin to go about describing one of these things. ( Big pause) Ok, what are hot flashes? It’s like a heat source that starts inside the core of your body, and from there, it sends out soldiers of sweat to every pore of your body! Sometimes it even makes you a little weak, and your heart skip a beat. Many women even use sound effects to sound the warning of it’s impending arrival. This pool of sweat makes you feel like taking a shower 10 times a day, of course we know that’s not practical, but that’s how you feel.
My hot flashes did not start right away, I had night sweats in the beginning, pretty much the same as the hot flashes, but it just happens at night while you’re sleeping.
My flashes were progressive, when they first started, I would get that little core heat thing and a little sweat coming up through my head and face maybe a couple of times a week. It would go away for months, and then pop up again here and there. Then it would happen more frequently until I was having them EVERYDAY! ALL DAY!

These hot flashes alone are enough to drive any women MAD!
At night I feel like I’m in a menopausal version of the karate kid, covers on! Covers off! Alright already! When does the heatwave stop!

Just like with the case of menopause, not all women will suffer with hot flashes, I actually have some friends that get the chills instead. Some women may experience hot flashes for a short period of time, and other women my have hot flashes off and on for LIFE! They are not really sure as to what causes these hot flashes, but some say that you can minimize or even stop them by watching the things that you eat. Others choose to take supplements or even try hormone replacement. These are things you will have to figure out for yourself.

It would make sense for us to think that our menopausal experience would mirror that of our moms, but most of us have no idea what our mothers experiences were because most of our moms never spoke about it, or perhaps back then, sharing their  thoughts and feelings would have gained them an unwanted label, or maybe they didn’t quite know what they were experiencing themselves. I can’t ever remember that being a subject in our home, and my mother was very big on educating my brother and I on the important things of life.  But really,  how could she  know in depth about this, if she wasn’t around women herself, that had gone through it and shared their experiences with her, her mother was dead by the time my mother was 16.

When it came to menopause, my experience was quite different than my mom’s,  first off,  my mother didn’t start going through menopause until she was in her late fifties, I was 37.  I so remember my mom having these crazy hot flashes accompanied with sound affects, and sweat dripping from her face Lol!  It was funny back then, but oh!  How I now know what she was going through.  I can’t really recall if she dealt with any emotional issues,  looking back I can say that I remember her being a little more sensitive in certain situations,  but nothing more than that.
I couldn’t understand why I started going through menopause so much earlier than my mom,  I was told that women who started to menstruate at an earlier age would most likely go into menopause earlier,  I guess that would make sense,  I started my period at around 11 or 12 and my mom started when she was in her teens.  There are women though, that do have the same menopausal experiences as their mothers. Not sure if anyone knows the rhyme or reason, it is what it is.

Sharing my story with other women I feel is the only reason I am not in the koo-koo house right now. FOR REAL THOUGH! Expressing my thoughts and feelings with some of my friends around the same age as me and older,  proved to be very beneficial to me. Low and behold! I discovered I wasn’t alone on that boat gliding off of the deep end! Many others had some of the same deep emotional and unexplained out of nowhere kind of feelings that I did. Now if the sentence I just wrote makes absolutely no sense to you, then you’ve just captured the thought I intended, because in the beginning that’s just how it is, a whole bunch of what in the heck is going on around here! That’s why it’s so important to seek out other women who can identify with what you are going through. If you isolate yourself, you will feel that you are alone in your situation when that is so far away from the truth!

Example of how sharing is caring. With just the little bit of knowledge I had gained over the first year or so that I had been going through pre menopause, I was able to help a friend of mine that was at lest 10 years older than me identify what was happening to her. like me, she had no clue! She said that she couldn’t understand why lately, when her husband got up to go to work very early in the morning she couldn’t go back to sleep, in fact, she would start having heart palpitations, and on two occasions ended up in the ER, fearing she was having a heart attack! Each time they found nothing out of the ordinary. In hearing her story I recognized similarities with some of the things that I had experienced, I shared with her that I felt somehow, the things she was experiencing, was linked to the peri stages of menopause, and that many other women that I had spoken to had been through some of the same things. I shared with her what a couple of my older friends had gone through when they first noticed they were going through the change. One who had been involved in public speaking for over 40 years was assigned to prepare and perform a public lecture, but now, it was met with deep fear, she just felt she wasn’t going to be able to get through it. She did fulfill that particular assignment , but took a break from that type of public speaking for a while. Another found it difficult to fly on planes when traveling in this manner was something she had done with no problem. Some women suddenly find it hard to drive on the freeway and will only take local streets to get to where they need to go. Other women who have lived alone for years! Now found themselves in a panicked state when entering their homes or apartments, unable to sleep unless someone else is there, life altering indeed.  I am happy to say that in each of the cases I’ve mentioned, the women involved were in time able to go back to their regular routines, some in months, others took over a year.

I said all of that to say this, had she not said anything to me, how could I have shared stories of myself and others with her? the poor women would have thought she was losing her mind like many of us do in the beginning, but when we talk to each other, we learn and take something away from it, something that we can share with our sisters, daughters, nieces, aunts, the sister girl next door and at work, and even our mothers who may already be done with the change of life thing, but can know understand with more clarity what they have been through. I don’t know about you, but there’s just something about knowing whats going on with myself, that gives me a little piece of mind ;0) The more we share and listen, the more educated we become, we can help forewarn other    women of the battle ahead. Our starting points my be different and our symptoms anywhere from zero to crazy! Lol! But ladies, are you starting to see that you are not alone? something is going on inside of us that we just can’t explain at the time, many of us are not educated or knowledgeable enough on this subject, it’s linked to things that many of us may know very little about. Do as much research as you possibly can and share what you’ve learned with others, the information and stories that you share are so VALUABLE! In my opinion even life saving.

If you would like to share your story with us, please e-mail it to: talk2theledge@gmail.com  Please also state that we have your permission to post it here on our blog. We thank you in advance for sharing.