I’ve been thinking about what to write for a few weeks now. This is probably a TMI (Too Much Information) topic for some, nonetheless it’s something I feel I should write about. Several months ago (June to be exact), I made a post on the book of faces about cellulite and women wearing bikinis. I can’t say as I’ve ever actually worn a bikini, but I have worn 2-piece bathing suites, normally high wasted or a tankini. When I say “bikini”, I’m talking about the kind of bathing suit that covers very little of the body and has strings holding the sides and top together. I’m way too hippy and “broad shouldered” for such a thing — the strings wouldn’t be long enough. Lol. Anyway, that post has stuck with me, especially since I have been on a weight loss journey this year. I actually began a new “lifestyle” (aka diet) in March after a visit to the doctor telling me that my blood sugar was bordering on pre-diabetic. I was shocked but not shocked by this. I mean, yes, since I had stopped teaching Jazzercise in December 2017 my weight had been climbing with a slight weight loss in 2019, but then most of it came back. But Diabetes? That isn’t something that even runs in my family (we’re a family of cancer, sheesh!). I was freaked out, so I decided (ok I was told by the doctor) to make an appointment with a nutritionist. I’ll be honest, I do not like her. Basically, everything I was doing for my “diet” was completely wrong. I could no longer eat bread, crackers, popcorn, chocolate, muffins….anything with sugar or carbs was off the table. Well, if you know me at all, you know I LOVE chocolate, ice cream, peanut butter & jelly sandwiches, and comfort food like biscuits and muffins. I do NOT eat salads or raw vegetables. YUCK! I gag or if I do get them down, I throw up later, it’s a texture thing and NO you’re not going to change me. I like my veggies cooked so that they a mushy, like baby food. So, what the hell was I going to do? How would I sustain? Welp, she told me to up my protein: more MEAT! Use butter, it has good fat. Then she gave me a list of products I could add into my diet to help supplement without adding sugar. Even though I don’t much care for her (she made me feel like shit for not losing weight fast enough), I started doing what she said. I even make a chicken vegetable soup or beef stew sans the potatoes on the weekly. And as of today, December 16, 2020, I have lost 40 lbs! I honestly never thought I’d see a number lower than 200 lbs because weight loss has been so hard for me since I started Peri-Menopause in my early 30’s.
Yeah, you read that right, I was around 33/35 when I started Peri-Menopause. That seems young, don’t you think? Well, it is, I think. Nowadays women are just starting to have babies around that age. I wasn’t far off from that, I gave birth to Jakob just a couple weeks after my 31st birthday. And by the time we were ready for another, I couldn’t get pregnant. We had tests done. John was producing just fine in the sperm department. So, it had to be me. But that didn’t make sense. I was ALWAYS regular…..here’s where some of you women will be envious — I would have my period every 28 days on the dot, and would bleed for an average of 2.5 days. So, surely, there was nothing wrong with me…..yeah, NO. Finally I had this procedure done where they inject your tubes with dye while you lie under an X-ray machine. And they found a blockage in my left tube, but it seemed to move with the push of the dye. I clearly remember the doctor telling me that it can happen to women sometimes who get this blockage that once it’s gone, they have no problem getting pregnant again. Phew! Another doctor from that same practice told me after the dye x-ray that I probably always had the blockage and that I’m lucky I ever got pregnant. Basically telling me for the first time that I had fertility issues.
So, life goes on as it does, but I start getting regular headaches, but not your typical headaches. Most of the time they start with auras that look like lightening bolts. The worst was when these auras would happen while I was onstage teaching a Jazzercise class, as I couldn’t see the edge of the stage. And yes, I kept teaching all the while dealing with the aura, then the pain. This is where I’d like to think that I have a high threshold for pain because I could continue to teach a Jazzercise class with minimal sight and throbbing pain in my head. My norm would be to go straight home after class, take an Excedrin Migraine, take a shower, then lie down in the dark with an ice pack on my head and sleep. Normally I’d awake with residual pain, but I could function and think more clearly. Anyway, one day I mentioned this to one of my students, about the headaches/migraines and that my period was no longer “normal” — like now my period would be anywhere from 28 to 35 days and I’d bleed anywhere from 1.5 days to 7.5 days — and she said “that sounds like the beginnings of menopause.” No, fucking way! I wasn’t done having kids! My doctor decided to put me back on birth control to help regulate my period, but I was still having the headaches and my period was all over the place. Finally she sent me to a doctor’s practice that specializes in women “going through the change”. By this point, I think I was 37/38 years old. First thing they did was run blood work…..my hormones were completely out of wack! I had been gaining quite a bit of weight despite teaching Jazzercise classes 7 or more times per week, so what the hell was going on. Hormones! My estrogen levels were extremely high (350 pg/ml) because of the birth control, so they took me off of that. But the worst was my testosterone levels….it was 17 nanograms per deciliter (average is 15 to 70 ng/dl). So, now I had to be on hormone replacement therapy (HRT). I had to rub cream on my stomach for over a year to get my testosterone levels back up. Eventually it worked (even though I now had hair growing on my stomach! Don’t worry, I plucked them!), and my periods became more regular. So, I stopped taking it. I mean the damn creams were costing me $145/month because they were compound prescriptions and insurance wouldn’t cover it! Damn you, Big Pharma!
Life goes back to normal, right? Well, it did for a couple of years until I didn’t have a period for 3 months. I was in my early 40’s by this point, and I knew there was no way I was pregnant. Mainly because the pregnancy test told me so. Off to the doctor I went. They decided I needed to go back on to Estradiol and Progesterone to kick start my period again, because I was too young to go through menopause. Yeah, it worked. And I hated it because I was gaining weight again. But along with these drugs comes twice-yearly blood work….guess what, my testosterone tanked again, only this time it was 7 ng/dl. Yeah, SEVEN. Of course my estrogen was great! Better than great actually. I said, “I am NOT going back on those creams. Are there any other options?” As a matter of fact there is! We can do the pellet! So, four times a year since I was about 43 I go to the doctor to have a small incision made on my hip (takes 2 stitches) to have a testosterone pellet inserted. It doesn’t hurt. I don’t feel it. I can even take the stitches out myself.
And things went along just fine for a few years, though I was still struggling with my weight and constant fatigue (that’s mainly depression, but I’m also on thyroid meds which don’t really help, except my hair growth on my head. Lol). Then one day I was working at a vendor fair we had at one of the Jazzercise locations I worked at. It was a Saturday afternoon, and I had a stomach ache. I felt “off”, but I made it through, besides I had to teach Sunday afternoon. But before I left to teach Sunday afternoon, that stomach ache got worse. I convinced John to come with me, he could sit in the car the whole time, but just in case I couldn’t drive, I needed him there. So, I drove to the center (takes about 25 minutes to get there from our house), taught my 60 minute class, rode home with John. I felt fine. No pain. Got home, took a shower, the adrenaline and endorphins started to dissipate while I showered though…..once I finished getting dressed I curled up on the couch and told John he needed to take me to the hospital. The pain was awful. Off to the ER we go. They couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me until they did a sonogram. “You need to go see your OBGYN first thing tomorrow, there is something BIG in there.” WTF?!?! Home we go. I barely slept that night, the pain was so unbearable. John said I moaned all night from the pain as I curled into a ball on the couch in the family room. Next day I get sent to an OBGYN surgeon from my regular “menopause” doctor. I had a cyst on my right ovary the size of a lemon. Because I was so young at 45, the doctor said he did not want to take the ovary out or do a hysterectomy. So, he removed the cyst. That was in April. As luck would have it, I get my pap smear done every August, aren’t you glad you know this about me? My “menopause” doctor does a sonogram EVERY year for my pap…..guess what? I had something large on my right ovary, about the size of a quarter. You’ve got to be fucking kidding me! So, back to the surgeon I go. Only this time because I’m not in pain, it’s not emergent so I have to wait until October for surgery (just when John starts a new job & we have new health insurance so we get to meet another deductible). And this time he decides to take out the right ovary. Which ended up being a good thing as it was a “bleeding ovary”, which means it would have happened again and again and again. The upside of the second surgery is that he was able to go right back in through the places (laparoscopically) he had previously, so no additional scars. Yay ME!
After all of this craziness, life went back to what ever normal is….my period went back to normal-ish and I was still getting the testosterone pellet every quarter. Then in June 2019 I had my last period. And to be honest, I was ok with that…..My doctor was not. So, back on the estradiol and progesterone I go in February of this year. Thirty days later, I have a period. Dammit! But nothing since then. So, here I am, 49 years old and menopausal. I never got pregnant again, and that’s saying a lot since I’ve been having unprotected sex for more than 21 years.
Oh, and most women gain weight when the go through menopause. So, here’s some advise, my female friends, go meet with a nutritionist! If like me you have struggled with your weight, even if you think you know best, there is likely someone out there who knows a bit more than you. The products alone that this woman introduced me to have been a huge help. Protein shakes and bars, digestive enzymes, adrenal support, etc. Find someone who will help tailor your diet to meet your needs. The one thing this lady got right about me is my sweet tooth, she said “you can eat candy, it just has to be sugarless.” And I have found some SWEET SUGARLESS CANDY!!! Now, if I could just find some carb-free, sugar-free chocolate chip cookies that don’t dissolve in my mouth.