Menopause Journal: Am I supposed to be sick?
No period. It's been more than two months. So I've missed two. I gave in and did the pregnancy test. It came back negative, but it's hard to believe unless I get my period. So I keep waiting, keep expecting it. After all, menstruation doesn't just stop one day, never to happen again ... does it? That doesn't seem right.
And now I see that menopause has become a disease. The other day I clicked on "menopause.com" and due to a JavaScript error, I never got past the menu of topics. One, titled "Doctor's Guide to the Internet," claimed to have the latest medical news for patients "diagnosed with menopause" ... Wait a minute. Diagnoses are made for diseases. I checked my American Heritage Dictionary to make sure: "The act or process of identifying or determining the nature of a disease through examination."
Maybe I'm feeling a touch of menopausal madness. Why is menopause diagnosed? Puberty wasn't. Another reference was a menopausal guide for women from ages 30 to 90. Applying the disease theory, wouldn't that make two-thirds of all women invalids or women invalids for two-thirds of their lives?
Oh, I know I'll need to think about hormones and the risk of osteoporosis, and I'll try to keep up with clinical studies, but must I have a disease?
The clinical terms for this stage of life seem pretty arbitrary. Perimenopause is the time of declining hormones leading up to menopause, but no one knows when it begins. Nobody even mentions it except clinicians. When I inquire, women mostly look puzzled and ask, "What is it?" My older cousin's response was, "How do you spell it?"
Clinically, menopause begins with the last menstrual period and lasts for one year from that date. But even that appears to exist only for a referential convenience, as there's little difference at the end of that year between menopause and postmenopause. Hormone levels can be measured, but some people use them up earlier than others.
One friend calls it mamapause, but I'm still a mama. I see the wisdom in referring to the entire process as the change. Yet, why THE change? There've been so many ? world changes and my own physical and emotional changes. My friend Madge said that her doctor warned her to look for symptoms as if she were in danger. Is this change more of a challenge or more profound than falling in love, becoming a parent, dealing with my 8-month-old son's meningitis, getting divorced, creating my own job, having Crohn's disease or grieving the deaths of loved ones? Life is change.
Life in Menopause
I'm reminded of Sunday Morning, a poem by Wallace Stevens, in which a woman contemplates the divine, which she finds "In any balm or beauty of the Earth." Aware of life change necessary for beauty, from the birth of the bird to its flight away, from a flower's bud to bloom and final fade, she asks if there is no change in paradise. "Does ripe fruit never fall?"
Only the stillness of death ends change. Where fruit never falls, neither would we. We wouldn't move or grow or even taste the fruit. I'll opt for change, recognizing that it involves loss as well as gain.
I'm not oblivious to aging. I know that my knees get stiff and my back creaks. I have wrinkles and I'm plumper than I used to be. I take my sweater off and pull it back on about 10 times a day. I could catalog and analyze symptoms. But it's not all bad. I notice that I need less sleep. Maybe there's merit to menopause. Just because we're not pregnant doesn't mean we baby boomers are finished. Flower children once, we've become mature peace lilies, extending our stamens, reaching for late opportunities to make our contributions. (Is sappiness a symptom?)
In my early forties, I anticipated the empty nest, and the creative juices that carried me into my born-again sex life also took me to the community radio station, where I hosted a weekly jazz show. I took up painting, illustrating a picture book about my sister. And I learned to sail.
In some ways I'm better able to focus. In fact once I start something, it's hard to stop. If I'm writing that's all I want to do. If I'm sailing, I want to stay out for weeks at a time. If I'm eating ice cream, I eat the entire quart. Whoops ! I guess that's not focus, just lack of self-discipline. I can't make myself clean the house or mow the lawn. Should I worry about this? Am I sick? Is it menopause? Or is it me?