There Will Be Blood

I have two teenage daughters, and I am a woman at the end of the childbearing bell curve. We spend a lot of time in my house menstruating, talking about menstruating, complaining about menstruation, preparing to menstruate, and recovering from menstruation. All totally normal.

Brace yourself. I am going to talk about menstruation.

I can commiserate with my girls. I see them suffer from cramps, and I remember that misery as I microwave heating pads and dole out fistfuls of ibuprofen to offer them some relief. I buy an endless supply of pads in at least three sizes and tampons and panty liners, none of which are ever on sale at the same time, and all of which are taxed as a luxury item, because there is nothing more luxurious than shoving overpriced chemically enhanced cotton wads in or near a cooch. I scrub panties and the crotches of jeans with hydrogen peroxide or a paste of baking soda and vinegar, making volcanos out of all the stains. I also endure the tears and rudeness and lethargy that one of us is constantly subjecting the rest of us to; misery loves company but hates everyone indiscriminately.

I’ve been doing this period thing for almost ¾ of my life, and while I would love to not deal with it, I don’t like the implications of breaking up with my lady friend. I actually thought that the dreaded M word had begun because I went from my current regular irregularity to a total uterine strike.

My period is all over the calendar. Not literally because what? Gross. I mean it’s not every month and then it’s twice in one month. It’s never a 28-day cycle like in the birth control ads. Sometimes it’s every 40 days, or every 22 days, or every 15 days, which is a real treat if it lasts 8 days or so. And then, out of the blue, it was over 75 days. It wasn’t my normal.

Naturally, I started to freak out. I’m old. This is it. I don’t know the first thing about hormone replacement. I’m going to wither and dry up and then fill out in all the wrong places. I will become invisible, as women of a certain age do, no use to anyone but not ready to shove out in the middle of the ocean on an ice flue.

I turned to the Internet, the source of the best and most accurate information in times of panic and worry.  Here’s what I learned: the definition of menopause is cessation of menstruation for a year in women of a certain age. I had 290 days to go.

Lucky for me, I needed to see my gynecologist for my annual exam, so I didn’t have to go out of my way to discuss it. I could just wait another week and then casually mention it with my feet in the stirrups. Deep down inside, I was convinced I was going to need a D and C, that fun procedure where they dilate you and scrape all the ick off your uterine walls. It’s an old school abortion, well, not wire hanger old school, but pre-medically induced abortion, back when women and their doctors could still make reproductive decisions together.  Naturally, I freaked out some more.

My appointment started out totally normal. Sit and wait. Pee in a cup. Finger stick. Sit and wait some more, only this time in a room filled with pregnant women. Feel old because you think you are in menopause and these women are all still fertile and youthful and you don’t want to be them but you don’t want to be you either.

I followed the nurse to the exam room. She asked me the usual medical history update questions, and then she asked the first day of my last period. I told her 80 days ago. She handed me some pamphlets and told me to disrobe and don my paper drape and vest.

These are the pamphlets:

 

They burned my flesh, just holding them in my hand. I stuffed them in my purse, got undressed, and assumed the position on the table.

My gynecologist seemed a bit surprised to hear I was on period sabbatical, because, get this, I am too young to be in menopause. She wanted to know about my mother and grandmother’s menopause experience, but they were of the generations who had unnecessary hysterectomies because something was wrong with every woman who was no longer having children.  Basically, we had nothing to go on except the 80 days part.

“Are you having menopausal symptoms?” she wanted to know.

“I don’t know what they are,” I said. And it’s true. I knew about moodiness, hot flashes, and no periods. Was there more to expect? “I mean, I could have hot flashes, but how do I know? Sometimes I get kind of hot for no reason.”

“Are you waking up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat and have to change your nightclothes?”

“No, nothing like that,” I told her.

“Crying for no reason?” she asked.

“I have two teenage daughters. There is always a reason,” I replied.

She ordered a blood sample to check my hormone levels and then prescribed Progesterone, which would make me have a period if I was still supposed to have one. She instructed me to wait for the lab results before taking the medication, but that I would need to take if for 5 days in order to make my period start. Apparently, if you are supposed to menstruate but you don’t, that can also be a problem, although she didn’t elaborate. I made a mental note to look it up on the Internet when I got home.

“So, I don’t have to have a D and C?” I asked her.

“Where did you get that idea? Of course not,” my doctor said.

“My own head. And the internet. But mostly my imagination,” I replied.

“Stop doing that. Stop looking up things, and stop thinking,” she recommended.

Two days later, the nurse called me to report that my hormone levels are normal. Totally normal. I am what is considered perimenopausal, which is totally normal for a woman of a certain age.

I took the damn pills. After yet another week, I got my period. It was not the massacre I expected. It was totally normal.

Since then, times are back to my 45 day, 30 day, 19 day routine. Perimenopause. I don’t really know what else to look for because I threw away my pamphlets. I imagine most women of a certain age do the same, and it’s totally normal.

Beware of Dog

Have you seen the Russian tampon commercial? Hopefully if you had not, you clicked on the link and caught up with the rest of us. Two of my male friends sent it to me, which is oddly flattering, although I hope it has more to do with my sense of humor than the desire that I die by shark attack during that time of the month. The part that makes it even funnier, funny ha-ha not funny weird, is that last week I was at the beach and, lucky me, I had my period.  Now, before you go thinking this falls into the Too Much Information category, just stick with it a little longer. I promise not to get all descriptive.

Anyway, one of these aforementioned friends, JM, had asked me if I was scared to go in the water while I was on my period because of the risk of shark attack. It is not important to know why he asked me that. Let’s just say it was happenstance that he had some sort of period/ocean curiosity at the same time I was menstruating at the beach, and so his question was unassuming and yet very timely. I explained patiently to him that I was a woman of my forties and knew my way around a tampon, and that I did not double as a chum bucket.

But is it a valid question, knowing that sharks can detect the scent of blood miles away? The Russians sure think so, and hell, are there even sharks in Russia? Let’s take a quick Google break. Okay, the short answer is there shouldn’t be, but because of the global warming hoax which apparently the sharks are in on, there are now.

So anyway, JM and I had discussed the likelihood of period related shark attack while I was at the beach, and not a day later, it was like a scene from “Jaws.” Not one of the good scenes when people get bit and die; rather, one of those scenes where everyone overreacts and it’s super annoying and you want them to get eaten by a shark just to make them shut up. Yes, I do root for for the shark.

My daughter and I were walking out to the beach when a man came up to us and asked us if we were going to the beach. That stupid question irritated me immediately, seeing as I had a beach chair in one hand and a bag of beach towels in the other, and I was wearing a bathing suit. No, idiot, I’m going to the Queen’s coronation, and I sure hope I’m not under dressed.

I remembered seeing this Einstein on the sand a few days before because at the time he was wearing an odd outfit, a green tank top and green swim trunks, the kind of green that makes you think this person must be colorblind. I politely told him that yes, we were in fact planning on going to the beach, and he said we needed to be careful because they had seen a shark that morning not even five feet from the shoreline. I asked him how big it was, and he said, again, five feet. He also told me that he had already informed the sheriff’s office, which would have reassured me if they were planning to arrest it.  I thanked him for his warning, and my daughter and I continued our way through the sand dunes to a lovely spot not too far away from the water line.

"Who calls the sheriff to report a shark sighting? That's like calling your dentist when you want a divorce," I said to my daughter.

As we opened our chairs and put down the bags and buckets, a woman walked over to us. She must have been the wife of the colorblind idiot town crier because she was also dressed oddly, in a Gidget style double knit one piece in red, white, and blue stripes. That suit had to be older than me, and I am not young. Come to think of it, I may have seen a picture of my grandmother in that suit, possibly with the same hair style. She asked us if we planned to go to the water, which made me wonder if this was the first time these people had been to a beach in the summer. Then she told me, get ready for this, that they had seen a five foot shark not five feet from the shore. Did they have a tape measure with them? I thanked her as I had with her husband, and she returned to her spot.

“Did they really see a shark?” my daughter asked me.

“I’m sure they did. They both think so, anyway,” I told her.

We sat there in our chairs, scanning the horizon and seeing, well, just a bunch of sand and water.

Another family stepped through the dunes, and before they could even get their flip flops off, the woman in the unintentionally vintage bathing suit swooped over to them with her warning about the shark and all the stuff about the five feet.  This family actually picked up their articles and left.

The colorblind man joined his retro wife under their umbrella where the kept a vigilant watch on the not even five foot waves lapping against the shore. Every so often, he would stand up with his camera and walk to the water, ready to document and possibly tag the man eating beast.

My daughter and I watched him watch the water and his wife warn other beach goers for about fifteen minutes, but then I got hot, so I stood up to walk to the water.

“Are you really going to go in there?” my daughter asked.

“Sure, aren’t you?”

“But what about the shark?” she said.

“I have news for you, honey,” I told her. “Every time we go in the water, there is a shark there. Where else are sharks going to be? Flying overhead?  That’s where they live, in the ocean. Let me ask you this: do sharks generally eat people? ”

“No,” she said.

“And what do they eat, seals?”

“Yeah, I guess,” she said.

“Well, you are wearing a lime green bathing suit and you have long blond hair, and I have never seen a seal that looks like that. Plus, we’ve been sitting here for a while, and nobody has died yet. I think we’re good. And it’s hot, so are you coming or what?”

We bravely put our feet in the water, and then for good measure, I stepped out knee deep. And guess what happened? I got wet, and I cooled off. I didn’t even step funny on a shell and hurt the sole of my foot.

By the time the rest of my family came outside to join us, I had already decided to not tell them about the shark, not because I secretly want them to die, but because I didn’t want to seem like I was overreacting like the shark couple. I started to wonder if they were even real, or maybe, just maybe, they had been victims of a shark attack at that very spot, and now they haunted the beach, appearing only on the anniversary of their tragic deaths, waiting to warn families of the dangers lurking beneath the waves.

Later, I spent some time researching, and I didn't find anything about a fatal shark attack on that beach during the 1960's. In fact, it turns out that sharks do kill more people a year than tampons, but that's by accident. Sharks aren't even attracted to human blood. Sharks also kill less people than hippos. Hell, even more people are killed by their own dogs than sharks in any given year, and they are supposed to be man’s best friend.

Fear not the large fish with the rows of razor sharp teeth that is billed a killing machine. It’s just not that into you. And that goes double if you are on the rag.