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A rare visitor
I guess at this point I should call it a rare and unwelcome visitor. My period showed up again for the first time in six months. This is four months less than the last period of time between “cycles”. So at the very least my menopause won’t be until I’m 54. My periods started kind of early when I was ten so it would just happen I’d have them late too. I know I am still within the average range but I’m slowly reaching that upper end of average.
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Hot flash?
I think I may have experienced my first hot flash last night. I was sitting on the sofa with the Scientist last night and suddenly felt really overheated. Our weather has been a bit warm and chilly lately so I asked him if he was feeling warm and he wasn’t. I don’t think the feeling lasted all that long although I’m not really sure as I must have got distracted by something else soon afterwards. Which leads me to think it didn’t last long since I was really uncomfortably warm. So possibly this was my first hot flash. I have heard I would know it if I had one but I can’t be definite that’s what this was. So maybe it wasn’t after all. Or perhaps it’s highly subjective.
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Various health issues
It’s been several weeks since I found out my right ear was blocked with wax but it seems to finally be clearing up. I’ve used various commercial products which I think did help break it up but then it was dry and block even more. More recently I’ve done a lot of ear irrigation and that was about as effective at times. For the better part of two or three weeks, it’s been blocked without even short periods of clearing up. A couple of nights ago we were are tai chi and I yawn or made some movement like a yawn and I heard a crackling and could hear much better for about two seconds. Then it blocked up again. But later on it started happening more and more. That night I thought I would use one of the commercial products again to help speed up the process but it all blocked up again. Then yesterday morning it started to improve until I took a shower and got it wet. It blocked up again, which was unfortunate as I had an appointment with a new doctor yesterday. It did eventually start clearing again so I think it’s definitely getting better. Meanwhile, the itchy factor has been maddening but I have avoided further poking around anyway.
My menstrual issues are still being investigated.  After literally skipping one cycle, I had one that more than made up for it in both amount and length. I saw my gp at what turned out to be one of the last couple of days and she sent me for an ultrasound. That showed my endometrial lining was 15mm, which was quite thick considering my period had just ended. She referred me to a gynecologist to rule out any serious issues and gave me some tablets to help cut down for the next period. That one arrived exactly on time and started a bit more normally than the previous one. I did have to take the tablets and it did last longer than usual and was heavier than usual, right up to the end. But it was much more manageable after the first five days passed. My gp  had advised me to eat more red meat while my body recovered. Of course, my appetite for it really dropped when faced with needing it. She also had me do a blood test and it turned out my iron was very low. The nurse called me and advised me to take iron tablets for three months and then we’d do a recheck. So far that has gone okay and I haven’t suffered from the worst of the side effects. I have been more tired than usual so I have been even more incline to less activity than I had been before all this started.
Yesterday was my appointment with the gynecologist and it was disappointing to have my ear block up again just as I was going there. But it was mostly okay in the end. I had to keep turning my head to fully understand him. He has a bit of an accent although I’m not sure what accent it is. Anyway, he discussed possible ways to deal with the heavy periods. The first issue was either to have a biopsy on the endometrium or to go into the hospital and have the doctor look at everything under anesthetic and take samples then. In the end he did a biopsy in the office. I wasn’t really expecting that to happen on the first visit but I guess it was okay. It was a most unpleasant experience, though, with the usual uncomfortable position. It took a lot longer to get a sample because while he was able to find the opening to my uterus, it couldn’t find a way in with the pipelle that was going to extract the sample. He did eventually get there and it was rather painful at various points. Then it was over, I was given a pad for bleeding and saw the doctor briefly again to get a couple of brochures on the two options he offered to handle bleeding. One is the Mirenda device, which is an IUS and the other was the ablation process. He has left it to me to see how the next cycles go and decide which process I prefer if we do anything further. I still have plenty of tablets to deal with the bleeding in the mean time.
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In the thick of it
It seems I am probably a bit further into my journey to menopause than I realised last time I posted. During this time, one period was completely missed and my body is currently trying to play catch up so it’s wreaking a bit of havoc on the body, enough that I wonder at what point I should see a doctor. It’s a bit more complicated than that but it seems likely my hormones have been a lot more off than they had been. Still no hot flashes. :)
Yesterday I had all sorts of problems with my computer and it soon came to my attention that I no longer had Malwarebytes running on my system. It seems to have stopped back in July and after considerable effort (helped immensely by the Scientist) it was apparent my installation was corrupted. Eventually I was able to uninstall it and reinstall. All seems to be running fine at the moment.
The problems on my computer led me to finally getting two step verification on some email accounts set up so that I can access them on the devices I want to use. This took quite a bit of going back and forth between accounts and setting things up but that also seems to be working properly and I can now check the email accounts with frequent use on my current phone, old phone, Ipad, tablet PC and desktop with no issues.
My temporary/casual job finished on the 12th of this month so I am back to the usual day to day stuff. I kind of miss the idea of work as I was earning a bit of money to add to the family accounts. It is nice not to have so many days wiped out at the moment though, particular at those times when I have to take a child to an appointment.
It’s been several months since our old lawn mower died on us and over the winter, the grass had grown rather tall in some areas. The Scientist and I went to a few places to check out potential replacements and after some indecision, we settled on another low-end sort of electric one which is probably a bit better than our previous model. I immediately set out to mow our front yard and after well over an hour, had made good progress. I was mowing along the side of the driveway, back along the side of the carport when the power disappeared abruptly as I accidently mowed over the power cord. We’ve only ever owned electric and I’ve not done this before (although did run over the solar light cord under tree several years ago). Â I discovered that not only had I destroyed the power cord but caused the power to go out in the house. It was too late to do more mowing so I didn’t end up getting a new cord until the next day. By then it was raining so I’ve now had to wait for things to dry again. I did get enough done to make the front yard look much better, much bigger. It’s amazing how much space tall grass seems to take. The backyard is still untouched but I will hopefully get to that in the next couple of days unless we get more rain.
Cutting the grass soon will be quite beneficial for the dogs, who are off to the groomer tomorrow. Little boy dog will get a full clip and finally get all the knotted fur cleared out. It seems to get so difficult to manage once it reaches a certain length. Fortunately it’s now spring so I don’t have to worry too much about him being cold. We had the warmest recorded day in September on Saturday and on Sunday, the high was not much different than the low had been overnight. It’s been considerably cooler the past few days but seems to be warming a bit again. I know to expect changes in temperature but I would prefer to avoid such drastic changes.
I was very happily surprised to find out Neil Finn is playing a concert at a winery down in Margaret River in November. It’s a one-off show and features one support act I’ve not seen but would like to and another one I’ve seen two or three times before. The downside is it’s a 3.5 hour drive to get there, which means a return trip of similar length. We considered trying to stay overnight but it seems there aren’t many options due to this being during a food and wine thing happening during this weekend or week. Anyway, we are going to try to wing it. I suspect it will mean that the Scientist does the driving there and I drive back since I will be more awake.
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Transition
This weekend I started getting those almost certain signs that my period was imminent, a mere nineteen days after the last one began. That cycle had been nineteen days too, so it was a bit disconcerting to think I’d be spending half of every month in the middle of a period. I had thought that my cycles were alternating between a short one and a nearly average length one, but upon reviewing notes I’d made I found that they have, in fact, been getting shorter as the year has progressed. So it seems pretty likely that I’m going through quite a few anovulatory cycles these days.
I’ve glanced through library books about the perimenopause in the past but nothing really shouted out that this was me. That’s not to say I wasn’t experiencing some of the signs but there was nothing that really felt like it was a change. I guess some of it has been happening so gradually over the years that it’s just a part of passing through the years for me, which makes sense when one considers the constants transitions throughout our lives no matter what age. But I do think I am on the brink of reaching the “thick of it”, so to speak.
I did some online research on perimenopause and it finally dawned on me that what I was reading and what I am starting to experience is exactly what is commonly referred to as menopause. It’s just been renamed a bit more appropriately than in the past. Here I’d been thinking this was yet another catch phrase stage for women to experience. I can only use as my excuse the fact that my brain function isn’t so great these days, one of those actual symptoms of perimenopause.