(Mostly) Menopausal Madness

It's all true what they say about menopause. I have experienced all of the above symptoms. The hot flashes have been miserable. Here's how it happens: I will be out shopping, in an air-conditioned store. Suddenly I feel the heat creeping up on me. It's as if a switch has been turned on deep inside me. My face turns red. I feel breathless. The sweat starts running down the back of my neck. Pretty soon my hair is soaking wet. It keeps up until I can't concentrate on what I am doing. I just get hotter and hotter and sweatier and sweatier. I start to feel as if I might collapse. I finally give up and drive home, with the air conditioning in my car running on high.


At other times, it's the forgetfulness. The forgetfulness drives me mad. It makes me wonder if I have lost my mind. No... it makes me feel as if I HAVE lost my mind. It feels like my brain is gone and an empty shell has been left behind in my head. Mostly it manifests in losing things. Some days it feels as if I spend hours just looking for things. Sometimes I have something in my hand, set it down for a minute, and when I turn around it's gone! I try my best to organize things so I can find them when I need them. You can find me at Target at least twice a week buying plastic boxes to store things in. Later, I go through all the boxes trying to remember which things were put into which box. I make lists then lose them. I start a new list, then find the old list and forget what I had added on to the new list. Socks get lost; sweaters get lost; receipts get lost. Just last week I called my doctor in a panic because I had lost a prescription he had written for me. Later I found out I had already had it filled and just misplaced the pills.


Sometimes my husband complicates things, that's true. Typically, I will gather all the items I need for running errands and put them in my car, all ready to go. Later, he will find the bag in the car, meant to be returned to the store or taken for recycling, take it out of the car and put it in the laundry room or the garage. I may come across it weeks later and wonder what it's doing there. I can't begin to count the times we have searched for an important something (document, bill, receipt, whatever), each claiming the other one had it last. He keeps a set of files. I keep a set of files. We each guard our files, lest the other one remove something and lose it.

Well, now I have wandered off from talking about menopause to talking about husband/wife issues. There is more than one kind of madness taking place here, isn't there? I think that's enough for one day!