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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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Menopause
Or should I say not yet…
I have an app on my phone where I keep track of my menstrual cycles. I’ve been using the same app for years and had pretty good records of it all. Then my phone kind of died in June or July and Apple replaced my phone and I lost the data. (I did have the option to do backups and I used to do them but hadn’t lately.)
I hadn’t had a proper period all year. I’m pretty sure the last one was in December last year but I wasn’t totally sure. I had a bit of spotting one day in March but didn’t count that at all. My period had been showing up about every two months most of last year and I thought maybe they had just come to a stop. Anyway, I had gone all year and I said to the Scientist just a few days ago that I was going to be pretty annoyed if I had gone all this time and then had another period.
Well, I came home from tai chi tonight and went to the toilet and guess what I discovered? The really bad part of this is I have no idea what to expect this time since it’s been so long. I did notice some breast tenderness a couple days ago but shrugged it off at the time. That must have been a bit of mild PMS.
Although I felt a bit sad about reaching menopause, I had come to some acceptance of it. But now the counting starts again. One small plus is I will now have a date to count from. And I will back up my data regularly this 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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Flashback to my youth
As I’m now 48 years old, I know that menopause is likely in the relatively near future. If I am lucky/unlucky (depending on how you look at it) it may still be another five or six years. At the moment, my cycles are still relatively regular. Some cycles are shorter and some are longer but they still average out. Hot flashes haven’t entered the equation yet so I wonder if I might be lucky enough to avoid them. Mood changes haven’t been a big issue, cyclically. At least not like they were in my younger days. I used to have a lot of mood swings premenstrually and that hasn’t happened that much in recent years. In fact it often surprises me when it does. I think the Scientist is grateful for that improvement. Â During my teens I had some pretty bad dysmenorrhea for several years, enough that I was put onto motrin, which was prescription-only at the time. I think this got better into my 20s and was reasonably bearable after having kids. Most of the time I can manage quite well so long as I medicate before pain becomes too bad and even some of the worst months are nothing compared to what I used to experience.
I had forgotten how bad the cramps were in the early days. I mean, I have forgotten how really bad it felt. I don’t think I’ve had pain like that in 30 years. Yesterday my period started and I took my usual pain medications at the first signs of cramps. When I got up this morning I felt quite fine and continued the same until early afternoon when that old familiar feeling hit me like a brick. I medicated a bit too late and it didn’t break the pain at all and I had to take an extra tablet and wait to see what effect that had. The medication eventually did kick in hours later but what a shock to have those early days brought back to me so vividly.
Which brings me back to this menopause that my body is moving towards year by year. My theory is this is part of that process and I might expect more of the same in future cycles. I think it might be a good idea to stock up on medication for the future so as not to be left unprepared.