My doc put me on norethindrone instead of one of the cute little pop a pill out normal birth control pills … not entirely certain what the actual difference is, I don’t speak pill-speak well enough to just read up on them and tell you what the deal is.
Pre hysterectomy it was freaking HEAVENLY to simply not bleed at all - with the form of PCOS with hell-cramps, either skipping totally or bleeding out with golfball sized clumps of yech and blood [ys I know it is all endometrial lining, but it looks like BLOOD, so blood it is. Deal with it.] just having a bottle of blessed agony-stopping was wonderful.
Maybe you’ll be like me. When I turned 50 I just stopped. As for hot flashes, my entire adult life has been pretty much one solid hot flash so I didn’t notice anything much worse than usual. The bad part is watching my hair fall out. Not a good look on women.
When I was a teenager, I had Roseanne Rosannadanna hair, I kid you not. It calmed down a little when I was pregnant, but perked up again after I stopped breastfeeding, although it never got quite back to the RR state. Thank gawd. It still looks thick and curly, but it is sooooooo much more manageable.
One thing about aging is that my migraines have become much more manageable. They don’t really hurt more than stress or sleep-deprivation headaches about 75% of the time. They are migraines, though, according to more than one doctor, including a neurologist and a psychiatrist, who said that if the only medication that makes them go away is a triptan, they are migraines. And it’s true. They laugh at OTC pain meds, and narcotics make them WORSE. If I let them go for days, which happened once because my stupid insurance company refused to refill the prescription, I start to get disturbances in proprioception, and lose depth perception-- my vision doubles, and then my brain starts suppressing one eye at a time.
After that weekend, my doctor wrote a letter to the insurance company, and they worked out a solution. But the point is, my migraines aren’t like when I was a kid-- totally debilitating: all I could do was lie in bed with an ice pack in total darkness, and hope I didn’t throw up. I didn’t get my homework done until my aunt intervened, and started calling me in sick for half a day after a migraine. Now I can function for at least an hour with one, so if I get one and am far from home, it’s manageable until I get to my sumatriptan.
Bumping this because, at 48, I am now smack dab in the middle of menopause. I’ve not had a period since last October - yay me!! I can’t describe how liberating it is. I can make plans and not have to wonder or hope that Aunt Flow won’t make an appearance.
The hot flashes - OMG the hot flashes!
Mine literally started overnight. It starts with a wave of nausea which means I have less than a minute for the heat to start. Then there’s a combination of incredible fatigue, elevated temp, headache and feeling like I have the flu and I need to go lay down right now or I’ll die. It lasts about a minute or two and then just goes away. It’s incredibly draining.
TMI warning for dudes!
You know, when you have your period, there is a slight smell of iron when you go to the toilet? Well, it’s kind of always like that, now. Is this ‘normal’? Is it just me?
Gah - hot flash!!!
Phew. I find that, if I’m sitting right in front of a fan when it starts, it doesn’t get quite as bad.
Those are bad flashes, I’m sorry they’re hitting you so hard. Mine were almost always at night, all night. It’s crazy how it feels the heat is coming from under your skin rather than at you. I lasted 5 months before finally getting a RX for an estradiol/norethindrone daily (spelling may not be exact) that let me sleep through a night again.
I’m afraid that if I had started it sooner I could have staved off some of the cognitive loss.
If you go for a smear test this year, don’t say menopause. I saw a new doc, I mentioned to the intake staffer that I thought I was in menopause and that became the basis for the Dr’s misdiagnosis that cost me several hundred dollars and a hellish biopsy that turned out to be unnecessary.
I have had two hot flash experiences. I’m just 41, though. I think they were ovulation-induced (yes, that’s a thing).
I’m looking forward to menopause, but I really really hope I don’t have to deal with hot flashes. I think they should be renamed “hot and creepy-crawly flashes”, because that would be more apt. If it was just feeling hot, it wouldn’t be so bad. But the two hot flashes I had were also accompanied by itchiness and antsiness…like I had restless leg syndrome all over my body.
YES. Thank you. I’m past menopause, but still get a strange thing happening. I feel a strange and unpleasant sensation in my chest, and the only way to describe it is that it feels like the sensation you get in your calves if you have restless leg syndrome. Then, precisely thirty seconds later, I get a hot flash. It’s a mild hot flash nowadays, not like the ones I got back when I was fifty-two.
When I got full-on hot flashes years ago, it was like someone opening a blast furnace against my face, throat and chest. It was not to be mistaken for just feeling a little warm or sweaty.
Around 47 I started bleeding like crazy every period. As in, was glad I worked from home. After much blah blah, time passes, yadda yadda, I got an IUD. No periods in the last 1.5 years. Recommend!
P.A. at my doctor was asking me a few questions when we were going over things because of my big life threatening blood glucose scare. She thinks I’m peri-menopausal. On the very same day the traumatic, giant upset over cutting half my hair off. Not pleasant to hear that day. I’m not looking forward to things progressing. My oldest Sister tells me horror stories. Gah!
See, that’s another frustrating aspect of it - your menopause may be nothing like that of other women in your family. There’s simply no way to prepare for it until you find one foot in it.
Mine are similar, but not as bad as yours. No nausea. But I do feel unwell and feverish. Then a wave of heart rises up through me, and often I sweat. Once my glasses fogged up. It lasts for longer than two minutes.
Truth be told, I’ve had occasional hot flashes since I hit puberty, especially when I’m over tired or in a different time zone. But they are much more frequent (daily) than before.
I have not had that. But I’ve been on an IUD for a couple of years that mostly ended my monthly bleeding before actual menopause.
I found it became extremely hard to orgasm. Going on estrogen fixed that problem, though. (That’s not why I started estrogen, but it was a nice bonus.)
I’d forgotten that I contributed to this old thread.
I did have a hysterectomy in Oct. 2017, so obviously I stopped having periods a year and half ago. But I decided to keep the ovaries for hormone reasons, and apparently they are still spitting little eggs out into nowhere once in a while. Technically, menopause hasn’t happened yet; I still have hot flashes every now and again. Not as bad as some described–just a sudden flush of warmth on my face and throat for no reason, more often at night but sometimes when I’m just sitting watching TV or at work.
Oh, well, as long as the bleeding’s stopped. With the fibroid, it was getting horrifically heavy near the end.
The irregular periods are what I warn my pre-menopausal friends about. IRREGULAR DOESN’T MEAN LESS FREQUENT. In my case, I’d have two or 3 periods 2 or 3 weeks apart, then I’d skip 8 weeks. Then another one two weeks later.
I’ve always been like clockwork, and that appears to be holding true in perimenopause. What that means is my cycle has been slowly and steadily shortening: 26 day cycle, hold for 2 years…24 day cycle, hold for a year…and now I’m down to 21 freaking days for the last 4 months or so. I anticipate a stretch of one long continuous period before it’s over. :smack: