12 Helpful Items to Help Get You Through Menopause

In no particular order, just like my hormonal state...

1. Miracle Foot Repair with aloe. You won't believe what happens to your feet.
2. An e-reader. I can't tell you how many times another book to read (without having to go to the bookstore) has kept me from doing something drastic! My Kindle has kept me out of the headlines!
3. The nicest cotton sheets you can afford. My favorites are from JC Penney, QVC, and Home Goods. Cotton for all those hot (not in a good way) nights!
4. A lighted, magnifying mirror. Yes, this item is a double-edged sword. You can see all the crazy changes to your face, but without it you can't see where to pluck or apply makeup.
5. A brand of makeup you can live with. For me, it's mineral makeup. I grew up a non-makeup girl, and still don't wear it all the time. But some days, we can't face the world without the war paint. Is that a pun?
6. A scent that always makes you feel like at least you smell nice. Nothing too heavy! Don't be one of those girls that make people cringe when they find themselves in the elevator with you. I like Amazing Grace from Philosophy. It's around $50.00 but worth the splurge for the way it makes me feel I'm still feminine. And I'm still using my bottle from about a year ago.
7. Dove soap.
8. Vaseline Intensive Care body lotion. In a 55 gallon drum size.
9. Era free and clear, or the color-free/odor free/detergent of your choice. Wash your undies in this, and use the 2 rinse cycle. Keeps irritation at bay. Enough said. Thanks to my fabulous G.P., Dr. Janice Dickerson, for this suggesting this one.
10. That reminds me. A great doctor who is in your corner. If she's a woman, more better. Sorry, men doctors.
11. A great blogging buddy or two. Nothing beats knowing you are not (totally) crazy, and that you are not alone. Thanks, Home Reared Chef!
12. If you can, adopt a homeless pet. My pet who sticks to me like glue is Smokey, a beautiful and loving long haired cat who was living in the woods with her kittens. We found homes for the kittens, and now Smokey follows me around and sleeps next to my pillow. While loving me unconditionally, she reminds me that my purpose in life is to open doors for cats.

why a non-Mommy reads Mommy blogs

One of my favorite Mommy bloggers told me she was amazed that non-Mommies like me READ and ENJOYED her blog. Got me thinking…

I read all kinds of blogs, including Mommy blogs.

As a non-Mommy, why do I enjoy reading Mommy blogs?

1.         If I only read non-Mommy blogs, I wouldn’t have as many blogs to read. Just saying.

2.       Mommies are people, too.

3.       Mommies are funny. Very funny.

4.       Mommies are busy. They inspire/prod/guilt-trip me. If they can make time to write blog posts, why can’t I?

5.       I might have been a Mommy in another life.

6.       Mommies can be so comforting.

7.       I want to understand Mommies. I see/talk to/teach Mommies every day.

8.       My mother is a Mommy. So were my grandmothers. So are some of my friends.

9.       Gratitude: at least I don’t have to feed more than 2 people at a time. Or diaper anyone. Most days.

10      Mommies are fascinating. Just like the rest of the peoples. Shazam!

Thank you, Mommy bloggers!

confessions of a sick person -- rambling post

Have you ever had doctors fighting over you? Talk about a strange feeling.

One doc thinks I had Lyme disease. The other doc thinks I had Rocky Mountain spotted fever or human Parvo. I know, I thought only dogs got Parvo, too.

 

Makes me feel special, and not in a good way.

I just want to get rid of the random joint pain and fatigue, so that my so-called life may continue. And I want to lose the eye floaters that are spiraling around my vision like orbiting planets. And the migraines. I’ve had migraines since I was 12, but nowadays they are way too frequent. Menopause and its myriad of symptoms is not helping with any of this.

My advice: stay away from ticks and just say “no” to Menopause.

I’m so tired of being tired, I’m tired of thinking so much about my mental and physical health. I know everyone around me is tired of my list of symptoms. When they very kindly ask how I’m doing, I just say fine. Who wants to hear about my latest bit of weirdness?

Bear with me—I promise this isn’t just me calling for the “wha”mbulance, as Schmutzie at Schmutzie.com would say. What a fab site, by the way.

One “positive” (that doesn’t seem like the correct word) note is the number of blogs I’ve discovered about people with similar health problems. Dozens of people blog about migraine, for instance. I’m comforted when I read about the therapies migraineurs have used. I can try some of the suggestions they have for coping with headaches. 

The women who write about menopause are truly brave. My favorite is on Blogher.com -- Virginia at the Home-Reared Chef. Hi, Virginia! You rock! You have mad writing skills, lady!

I don’t care what anyone says, it’s still taboo in most circles to bring up menopause. It’s the elephant in the room that we menopausal women are supposed to pretend doesn’t impact our lives. Even other women can be quite judgmental. Just because they breezed through menopause without a tremor doesn’t mean that some of us aren’t experiencing a daily earthquake. For years at a time.

These health blogs about menopause, migraine, depression, and more, help put my troubles in perspective. Help keep me going. I’m not happy that they are sick, but I appreciate that these bloggers share how they manage. Makes me feel less alone. Like maybe I can get through this, one day at a time.

Some people count themselves lucky for a few hours a month that are free from migraine. I’m not in that bad of a place, even though the place I’m in does stink. Some people can’t get out of bed because of depression. I cried my way to work more days than I can count in the last year, but thanks to 4 prescription meds I was able to get out of bed and go to work. 

Some people would be appalled if they knew that I’m taking a lot of prescription drugs. I haven’t told more than a couple friends just how many I’m taking. Sometimes I feel very defensive about my drug therapies, but someone who has not experienced clinical depression has NO right to judge us. 

Before this bout with depression (menopause related) I had no idea of the physical, crushing sensation in one’s chest that is possible with depression. The debilitating nature of insomnia. Or how the tears could just start flowing apropos of nothing. How you can’t just “get a grip” or “snap out of it.” I’ve learned that positive self-talk is good, I have little mantras to use when it’s a particularly bad moment, can drop my mind into guided imagery, but I know in my heart without the drugs I might not (almost certainly would not) be making it. How sweet it would be if a little exercise, sunlight, and St. John’s wort would make it all better, but this depression did not respond to milder remedies.

I’ve learned a lot from being depressed. I was never that much of a believer in “better living through chemistry.” But NOW: if a chemical cocktail can keep me functioning, out of a psych ward, and spare me from Electro Convulsive Therapy, then get out of my way as I head to the CVS. 

I have a lot of students who are struggling with depression, PTSD, and a laundry list of other health problems. Some students are very upfront about their battles, some, like me, try to fly under the radar. I understand them all a little better since I’ve had these health battles over the past years. 

When someone I meet, perhaps a checker in a store, seems to be having a bad day, I try to understand that she/he might REALLY BE HAVING A HORRIBLE DAY AND JUST TRYING TO SURVIVE ONE MINUTE AT A TIME. She might be battling depression, menopause, some critical illness, OR have a loved one who is battling one or more of those issues.

I try to remember to offer a kind word. From time-to-time a stranger says something particularly kind to me, out of the blue. It helps. For a minute, the world brightens. Maybe that’s one of the not-so-little reasons we’re here on this planet?

I'm still here... But I'm a Big Baby!

Oh, my heck. Hello blog universe. I haven’t forgotten you. I’ve been sick!

I was reading Janelle at Renegade Mothering, http://www.renegademothering.com/ and lady, I concur. Janelle has been sick, too. She doesn’t have health insurance at the moment. Been there, and it stinks. She and her family can’t afford $1,000 a month to bridge the temporary gap until they are insured again. Even though I have health insurance more or less paid for by my employer, I pay almost $600.00 a month to insure my self-employed husband. Our vehicles have a combined age of gosh, 25 years, so that we can make that premium.

I can’t believe that people in our country can actually lose their homes and go bankrupt because they got SICK. And that can and does happen even if the sick person played by the “rules,” drives a 12 year-old car and has so-called “health insurance.” This is Wrong, Wrong, Wrong.

I’m lucky enough that I currently do have health insurance through the state of North Carolina. I’m trying to feel lucky, anyway. It’s definitely better than nothing, but as insurance goes, it ain’t great and they are daily taking away benefits, raising co-pays, and generally doing their best to send teachers further into despair (because teachers caused my state’s budget, crisis, right?).

 I was in the hospital for a 4 hour outpatient procedure TWO YEARS AGO and I am still coughing up $100.00 a month to pay off the bill that was not covered by insurance. So we don’t go out to eat very much. Almost never. But hey, we do eat. And I keep decent tires on the old car. Counting blessings….

But the health care situation in this country? It ain’t right, especially when I’m SICK.

When I’m sick, I’m ANGRY. I’m scared. I’m weepy. I make myself even more miserable, sure that every ache is the precursor to PAINFUL DEATH.

I am not good at SICK. My imagination runs wild. I see myself becoming an invalid, my husband leaving me (he’s sticking to me like a barnacle—hi, honey), and so THERE’S ME, dying sad and alone. Just because I have a fever of 102 and bad body aches. I am officially SUCH A BABY.

And crazy high liver enzymes. What the heck? My liver is one of those body parts that I know I need, but that I kind of take for granted IS going to work, for Pete’s sake. I don’t drink, don’t use drugs, don’t have hepatitis, etc., so what in the blue blazes does my liver have to go off ALL CRAZY about?

Please, liver, hang in there for me.

So I’ve been downing doxycycline, a powerful antibiotic that also makes me feel even more fevered and achy, because the only thing the doc has come up with is that I may have Lyme disease from a tick bite at the end of April. Whatever you do, DO NOT GOOGLE LYME DISEASE.

All I previously knew about Lyme was that you got it from a tick bite, and some people got really sick and maybe even died from it. Now I know all that, and that some people may really, really suffer, then die from Lyme. For a person with imagination, it’s hard to imagine an infectious disease that sounds too much scarier. Goodness, Magic Johnson has HIV and he looks pretty spiffy.

Some sick people are INCREDIBLY courageous. I know this from watching various loved ones. They have set me an example of suffering nobly.

The example hasn’t worked. I don’t suffer nobly. I feel incredibly sorry for myself. I cry, using up boxes of Kleenex at the thought of my painful demise. I’ve had a good life, I decide, but I’m just not ready to go yet! Boo-hoo-hoo.

Finally, I finished the two week course of doxycycline yesterday. And you know what?

I think I’m going to live. I trust my Doc Lady, and she’s all over this mysterious thing. They have taken, no lie, 25 vials of blood, a chest x-ray, 2 urine samples, and have an ultrasound planned. Of course, they’ve poked, prodded, squeezed, and checked me for spots.

Her nurse called me this morning. After 4 long weeks of blood tests, my liver enzymes came back normal. Normal!

It felt like the best gift ever. I was elated, people. They’ll still do the ultrasound of my liver to check for damage, but I feel like my liver is back to being a friend. I love you, liver!

Janelle (Renegade Mothering) said one of best results of being sick is how great it feels to be well again. So, so true. I’m not totally there yet, but I see it on the horizon. And I’m hoping.

just bullwhipping

Tommy Barnes had some time to kill between classes at the university where he’s a junior creative writing major.

So he went out to his truck and got out his bullwhip.

He had some empty water bottles, and he set them up on the open tailgate of his pick-up truck for targets. Tommy began practicing his aim with the bullwhip—CRACK!, in the lovely fresh air that early fall day on the edge of the shady campus parking lot.

A little background may put this in perspective from Tommy’s point of view. He’s a backwoods-of-Florida young man (yes, there are a few still left), about 26 years old. At one time in his life, he lived alone in the woods in a trailer with no running water or electricity.

He hunted, trapped, and ate the animals. He grew vegetables. He rarely went to town or shopped for food. He wrote poetry. He grew a beard. He was 20 years old.

When I met him a few years later as his first college English teacher, he had a meticulously-kept folder of dozens of his poems. Good poems!

Tommy is that rarity in modern life, an individual. Lady Gaga, you Madonna wanna-be, you only wish you were half the unique person Tommy is.

Maybe this explains why when Tommy took out his bullwhip on that sunny fall morning, he didn’t dream of the reaction by the conformists, his fellow university students in North Carolina. College students raised on a bland diet of Domino’s pizza, the Simpsons, the Sopranos and re-runs of Friends were not prepared for Tommy. The little lambs.

Slack-jawed with astonishment at the sight of a ball-capped, blue-jeaned bullwhipper, they called the cops as quick as their fingers could hit 911.

A few minutes later, campus police arrived.

Lost in the moment, unaware of any commotion, Tommy was still bullwhippin'.

“What are you DOING?” they asked. Pre-Tommy, they thought they’d seen it all.

“Um, practicing with my bullwhip…” Tommy tried to explain. Essentially a sweet soul, he doesn’t truly understand the magnitude of his own uniqueness.

“Well, you’re scaring people. You gotta stop.” The campus police officers looked at Tommy, his bullwhip, and his rusty pickup truck plastered with the University of Florida Gators logos.

“You’re not from around here, are you, son?” the flabbergasted officers deduced.

“Nope.” Tommy rolled up his bullwhip. He didn’t argue.

I’m guess I’m just an ole redneck, Tommy thought. He was happy they didn’t arrest him, but amazed that his bullwhip had cause such a ruckus.

I’ll never have another student like Tommy. Gosh, I love that kid.

(Student names are always changed to protect privacy.)

roller coaster of school and ... love!

The semester is winding down at my community college and it's an emotional roller coaster. I get choked up with love for some of my students and how I'll miss seeing them each week. And... getting kinda happy at not having to deal anymore with the few students who are <stinkers>!

Silly me, I thought teaching at a college meant I wouldn't have to deal with much in the way of discipline issues. But that's not what I want this post to be about. Let me change gears.

I do love my students, and some of them love me back. Get your mind out of the gutter! This is platonic love between people working toward a common goal of getting our English on.

My students are nothing if not complex. Julie has served a couple of combat deployments in the Marines, drives a Harley, has extensive tats, but can dress up like a girly-girl when she's in the mood and rocks a college research essay like nobody's business. I adore her and told her if her momma don't treat her right, she can come on and be my daughter.

A former student that I hadn't seen in a year came by to tell me he'd received his bachelor degree. He brought me angel trumpet flower plants that he grew in his own greenhouse. Sven is a retired Marine Sergeant Major (the highest enlisted rank there is in the Marines), 6 ft. 6, with a mad green thumb-- yet I doubt you would peg him on sight for a flower lover. He looks more like the biker that he sometimes is on weekends. Yet, there he was outside my office door with a cardboard box full of plants. He even brought me photos to show what the plants will look like when they get mature. Made me feel like a queen to have Sven care enough to bring those plants in.

Another former student popped in. He'd been away at the Merchant Marine Academy, but is now back in town finishing up a few credits to get his bachelor degree. While Gregg was gone, he served on ships in the Bering Straits and in the Great Lakes in the winter. He got hurt twice by equipment, lines snapping, that kind of thing, and showed me the scars on his leg and the back of his neck. He's 23 now and has come a long way from the socially awkward 17 year old I had in freshman composition. He said I was the only teacher at my school that he wanted to come back and say "hi" to. How humbling is that! Sheesh.

Like I said, a roller coaster ride. I'm still hanging on, getting ready for our school's graduation ceremony and the start of summer session classes. And a whole new crop of students. Some will be stinkers, some will be future sparkly gems.

(Names are always changed to protect student privacy.)

comfort in small things: British detective novels, pre-1930 (does that sound dry?)

Why, when I feel stressed, do I crave pre-1930s British novels, especially detective novels?

1. I am an English-teaching nerd.

2. The manners of people in these books seem so predictable.

3. Predictability calms my nerves.

4. I know the detective will ALWAYS catch her/his perp. And then say something dryly humorous. I aspire to be dryly humorous. If only.

5. The settings and situations are completely unlike 2011 in the Southern U.S. Petrol is cheap and trains are running at all hours, so who even needs petrol? The next train is at 10:20 with a sleeping berth? Take me away!

6. There is almost always a cheery fire in the grate and a cup of tea or a whiskey and soda. And biscuits. Or scones, with butter. Or a saddle of mutton. Eww on the mutton, but oddly comforting.

7. If there's an occasional French phrase, my high school French classes make me feel smart.

8. Feeling smart, even momentarily, calms my nerves.

9. Even though it's always raining and cold, the Brits keep on keepin' on. Redoubtable. Even the elderly ladies. They have Burberrys, umbrellas, and hats. Tweeds, too. Boots.

10. One's honour is everything. One may lose one's way temporarily, but honor will always win out.

Ahh. I feel better already. Now, will it be Agatha Christie or Dorothy Sayers tonight?