Even though every path led to menopause, it was like oxygen to me—everywhere yet invisible. And it continued to remain that way thanks to my infinite capacity for distraction. It beckoned one afternoon as I read an announcement for a lecture on cryonics. This is the science of freezing body parts (especially heads) as part of an effort to live forever. Suddenly I found the topic fiercely seductive and I just had to know everything about it. With that new focus firmly planted, I set off to a private club downtown where the event was being held.
I took the elevator to the top of the office tower, scoped out the dated but still elegant foyer, and then quietly entered the small crowd that had pooled in front of the lecture room. Everyone had either a PhD or an MD after their name and I immediately decided not to talk, except maybe to a waitress. But I wouldn’t say no to a cocktail and I made my way to the open bar. I ordered vodka on the rocks for fortification, took a sip, and made my way to the small banquet room. I stood there looking lost and helpless until a chubby waitress rescued me and led me to an available seat. I set my stuff under the chair and then sat down. To the right of me was an Asian physician scrolling through his Blackberry and to the left, a broad shoulder man wearing a red-and-white checked shirt, like a gingham table cloth. It was the orange-tinted glasses perched on an bulbous, slightly flared nose and the intense glare of his shiny bald head that made him appear decidedly eccentric. I was startled me when he suddenly started talking.
“I’m really excited about this lecture,” he announced as I reached for the bread basket. “We’re going to learn the current state of the art and science of vitrification. This guy is a true scientist. No horseshit.” The words had been directed at a water glass so I wasn’t sure if I should respond. I sneaked a look at his name tag. It read, “Dr. Chris Heward, PhD, President, Kronos Science Laboratory.” Later I’d be able to pick him out from a crowd a mile away and I’d learn that being called a, “true scientist,” was the ultimate compliment from Dr Heward. There was science and then there was everything else, and science, he later remind me regularly, was the only thing that really mattered.
“Hi, I’m Chris Heward,” he said catching me reading his chest.
“Oh, yes, Hi! I’m Pamela. Pamela Tames,” I said extending my hand. “But, I’m not a scientist.” As soon as I said it, I felt my face flush red. Dr Heward shook my hand and smiled.
“That’s okay. We let a few of your people in from time to time,” he said with a straight face. “What brought you here?”
Now I was screwed. What was I going to say, I’m here because I don’t feel like facing my life? It was one thing to admit that to myself and quite another thing to admit it to a scientist. He’d think I was a complete idiot. Instead of going into “amateur scientist” mode, and asking some questions about his research area or something like that, I took a big gulp of my cocktail and asked him, like a five-year old begging for ice cream, if they were going to show us any frozen heads. Then to top it off, I quickly added my well-reasoned position on immortality. “Honestly,” I went on rhetorically, “why would anyone want to live forever?” I turned away from him with an everything-is-so-easy-for-me smile and finally introduced myself around the table. I could feel Dr Heward’s boring into me with what could only be interpreted as utter disbelief.
“You can’t be serious,” he barked, interrupting my friendly greetings around the table. “If you could choose immortality, are you saying you wouldn’t?” Dr Heward was truly horrified. “I would love it,” he continued without waiting for my response. ”I’d get a couple of doctoral degrees every lifetime. There are so many things I’ve always wanted to study but never have the time,” he added with the kind of gusto I typically reserve for chocolate.
Of course I still didn’t know I was talking to the head of an anti-aging research laboratory, someone who had dedicated all his intellectual faculties to the pursuit of health, longevity, and wellness, and directed millions of dollars in research projects towards that end. I braced myself to be bored out of my mind listening to this geek go on about immortality and the endless pursuit of PhDs. I cursed my fate that I had ended up sitting beside Dr I’m-Gonna-Live-Forever.
“I’ve already had enough bad relationships to last at least seventeen lifetimes, so, nah, I’d choose death,” I said off-handedly as I reached my glass of ice water.
Dr Heward shook his giant head, shocked that someone so unappreciative of the latest in body-freezing techniques could be sitting beside him and actually wasting his time in conversation. He pushed away the anemic salad of bloodless tomatoes and colorless iceberg lettuce and stared at the yellow tablecloth, a frustrated look in his eyes. I could tell he wanted to say something—either that or crack a plate on my head.
“And anyway,” I added, prodding him on. “You can’t tell me that you’d actually trust a company to survive the many years or decades it’s likely to take to figure out how to safely unfreeze your head and then reattach it to a working body?
“I’m not telling you anything of the sort,” Dr Heward spat back. “I just said that Greg is a first-rate scientist doing groundbreaking work in a difficult and unconventional field of research. I’m excited to hear what he has to say, but I can assure you, nobody is more skeptical about this stuff than I am. Why are you here?” he asked, challengingly. “Are you some kind of ‘deathist’?” He was staring at me intensely with what I later came to know as his superior scientist look.
“Hey,” I said a little too loudly, “Don’t knock it til you try it!” I giggled as Dr Heward looked at me closely, decidedly unamused.
“You think growing old and dying is a good thing?” he asked incredulously. “How old are you anyway?”
Trust a scientist to spare no social niceties in an effort to make a point. “I’m 43,” I answered unashamedly, “slowly emerging from many years stuck in denial of menopause.” The admission had just slipped out, surprising mostly me. It was like coming out at an AA meeting—‘Hi, my name is Pamela, and I’m in menopause.’ I looked around at the table’s occupants, all of whom were pretending not to listen. I almost expected to be escorted off the premises.
“You’re already in menopause?” Dr Heward asked with surprise bordering on alarm.
“Yup. In fact, I think it started at 38. I got mixed up and thought it was anxiety and a bunch of other things.” I realized the more I tried to explain myself, the stupider I sounded.
“The harbinger of death!” he declared, slamming a fist on the table and re-organizing the cutlery.
“Excuse me.” I turned in my seat and looked straight at him. “What the hell are you talking about?” Had he just changed the topic? I had no idea where he was going.
“Evolutionarily speaking, once you hit menopause, it’s game over. No viable eggs, no ticket to the game,” He chuckled. Easy enough for him to get a kick out of a problem he’d never have.
I was aghast, speechless and annoyed when the lecture started cutting us off. I tried to follow the lecture but I couldn’t stop thinking about his “harbinger of death” comment. I started squirming with frustration. No one’s going to tell me my biology is my destiny, I fumed inwardly. Especially not an annoying male scientist. I wanted to storm out right then and there but forced myself to sit through an explanation about the freezing rates for rabbit tissue in different solutions. I was planning to ambush Dr Heward with my questions at break.
Unfortunately, it didn’t go that way. After what must have been the longest question and answer period in recorded time, the moderator announced the end of the talk. I must have taken a little nap because the applause startled me. I bolted upright and immediately checked Dr Heward’s seat. The bugger was gone! He’d slipped out without so much as a good-bye.
The Sherlock Holmes of Hormones
Confessing All Failures, Imagined and Otherwise
Looking back, I could have saved myself a few years of suffering, which is exactly what denial got me. But that would have been what a sane woman would do and being hormonally deprived, I was off my rocker. So I doubled up on the denial and stuck to my original plan. Pretend like nothing had happened.
Mornings, I’d pinch my ever-thickening waist into tire rolls and follow this up with anxious peering in the mirror to monitor the progressive wrinkling of my skin. Assuming a brave front to friends, I’d defend the virtues of daily naps, and while hiking up my saggy black sweats (daily uniform), boldly claim that despite all evidence to the contrary, I, unlike the billions of other women before me, would be spared this ridiculous life passage. After all, Madonna does not do menopause.
The disconnect between my delusional self and physical reality made for some embarrassing behavior as I used the only hormone I had left in me—adrenaline—to throw myself, macho-like, into hair-raising activities that hopefully would prove to the world that I had not changed a bit.
“Did you check out that move?” I’d announce while climbing out from under the all-terrain vehicle that I had managed to roll on top of myself due to my less than rapid reactions on a hairpin turn in the sand dunes.
“The entire side of your arm is bleeding. And it looks like you peed your pants,” observed some horrified friends.
“Really? Can’t feel a thing. Hey, help me roll my bike back up. I can’t wait to dislocate my head!” Hah, hah.
It’s a sad thing, becoming a fool in front of the world. Something family members and friends, who, sick of my macho repression of menopause and anything else related to aging, tried to fight by swatting my “youthful ego” with frequent and sly observations about my general decline—things that even I hadn’t noticed.
“Uh, Pam, did you have garlic last night or something?” This, coming from my Asian friend, Mung, who looks 15 at the age of 45.
“Why?” I ask, as I guiltily cupped my mouth with my hand to smell my breath. ”Is it really bad? I just brushed my teeth.”
“It’s worse than the smell of garbage on a hot summer day,” Mung said with in mock repugnance. “Try chicken feet. It’s good for the digestion.”
After the bad breath comes the gas and constipation. When I was in my twenties, I could eat anything. A pound of filet mignon at a sitting, washed down by a Guinness and cheese Danish for dessert, for example, would trigger a symphony of gnarling, gurgling and gnashing as the tasty meal would fail to defy virtually immediate dissolution in the mighty corrosive acid pool called my digestive juices. Now eating something as pabulum-like as fat-free yogurt unleashes dead silence, until of course, fermentation and putrefaction set in.
This is probably not a side of me you really want to know, but now that I’ve started, I can’t stop this physical confessional. It’s as though, in aging, I’ve done something terribly wrong and am in need of repentance. Please forgive me.
After the Macho Phase came the Research Phase. As self-appointed physician to me, fond of malpractice at my own expense and lacking all data, I decided that it was time to get to the bottom of this medical mystery once and for all. Even though I hadn’t had a period for years, menopause was, quite simply, a red herring. And running from doctor, to numerologist, to naturopath, to chiropractor, and at least three psychics and one Russian astrologer, I was intent upon figuring out what, if anything, to do about these enigmatic “symptoms”
I mean, think of all the other things it could be. There was, for instance, a remote possibility that I was experiencing the longest no-show pregnancy in human history. I clung to that hypothesis for at least two years. No baby forthcoming, I moved to my back-up excuse: stress combined with low body fat had caused a temporary and premature cessation of my periods—known in the trade as “amenorrhea.” The stress part was real—my job was killing me. The low body fat part, highly suspect, being as I was 20 to 30 pounds overweight. But what the heck, it sounded good. A few relaxing spa weekends sitting in mud with hot stones on my crown chakra and an “om” in my heart would solve everything.
The periods never did resurface, scared away no doubt by full-blown personality derangement. Wild mood swings took me from Vesuvius-like explosions of anger (studded with some truly imaginative expletives) to hysterical, you-killed-my-puppy crying. Ah, yes, those were the days. All those “Hallmark moments,” alternately pissing off and terrifying anyone within a one-mile radius.
And still, I was, “whaddya mean, I’ve got a problem? You’ve got the problem,” with you of course referring to The Hapless Boyfriend Du Jour. It’s always his fault. Every woman knows that.
I was sitting in the cramped kitchen of with my best friend, Mung. For years now, we not only started Saturday mornings but often wasted whole weekends sipping on coffee brewed from espresso beans. Mung was staring at me skeptically as I whined on about the problem with men. She crossed her eyes, giving me the, you’re-making-me-crazy look.
“You’ve got 15 seconds to tell my why he’s always to blame?” she challenged me.“When are you going to take responsibility?” Mung flicked some wayward strands of her long black hair off her shoulder and looked at me expectantly.
“Geesh, I cannot believe you are taking his side. I thought you were my best friend?” I pouted, turning away from her scrutinizing black eyes. “Day after day after day, I walk into the bathroom and there they are!”
“What? The hookers?” Mung deadpanned.
“No, worse. The piles of filthy clothes! They’re killing me.” I dropped my head in my hand with let loose a dramatic sigh. “Is there any more coffee?” I muttered into my lap.
“You’ve had five cups, Pam.” Mung pointed out impatiently.
“Whatever,” I paused briefly and then started up again, onto a new rant. “Get this, I go into the kitchen and he’s left the Half-and-Half on the counter!” I hollered. “Maybe you don’t cry over spilt milk but for rancid cream, you break knee caps,” I banged my fist on the table, startling Mung. “Then there’s the whole issue of the dishwasher. He acts like opening it will unleash the nuclear arsenal. And…”
“Pam! Stop!” Mung signaled a time-out. It works for toddlers.
“I’m sorry,” I pleaded with clasped hands. “I want to hurt him so badly.”
“I still don’t understand what he’s done,” Mung said quietly, trying to calm me.
“Mung,” I screamed, “He’s drinking” It just snuck out of me—my last stab at saying something that might actually get her sympathy.
Mung exploded with laughter, spilling her coffee on the table. “What do you expect? He’s got to live with you.”
“This is serious!” I said looking at her seriously. “Now, I’ll have how to go to Al-Anon meetings and pretend to give a shit.” I moaned at the thought of having to be the supportive partner.
“Pam,” said Mung firmly, “He’s normal. You, I’m afraid, are not.” She reached across the table and put her hand on mine. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but you never did finish therapy did you?”
“Which time?” I asked curiously. “I’ve started about seven times.”
Mung shook her head. “I don’t know what to tell you. You’re impossibly stubborn. You can’t blame your boyfriends all the time. You’re the one thing in common.”
Of course, Mung had a point. But if it isn’t the boyfriend, what could it be? Hey, wait a minute–it’s the job! What Mung didn’t understand, was that I worked in the advertising business—a hotbed of gossip, politicking, and stress. And though everyone kept telling me to quit, the money’s not worth the stress, blah, blah, I had fashioned myself into a rip-roaring, damn-the-torpedoes capitalist. Yup, those were heady years. I’d run around the office writing in big red letters the corporate mission as I saw it on all available white boards: “If you can’t think big, think bigger.” This was followed with about 20 exclamation marks.
Sadly, even this little profit-and-loss power machine hit a wall. I knew it was over when sitting in meetings, I’d find myself gripping the edge of the board room table trying to breathe, so paralyzed was I by anxiety. Colleagues would look at me with bemused curiosity as though I were the little goldfish that had jumped out of its bowl, flip-flopping to a hypoxic death.
In the only moment of clarity I had had in years, I wrote my resignation letter and then I did the professional thing. I snuck out the back door and never came back. And just in case, I changed my mind, I moved two states to away with my new boyfriend who still thought I was nice and normal. Boy was he in for a shock.
It took having absolutely nothing to think about to normalize my breathing and calm the anxiety. And, guess what? I still hadn’t had a period. Which of course gave me something to think about.
Eventually it dawned on my I had never really studied an “official” list of menopause symptoms and that was probably a good place to start. I turned to my German friend, Elsie, a medical publisher who, in her Marlene Dietrich voice, reprimanded me for being so intellectually lazy. I waited with phone perched on shoulder as she tapped away on her keyboard.
“Okay,” said Elsie, gently preparing me. “You better sit down. Here’s a fairly complete list.” There was a long pause after which she started reading aloud for what seemed an eternity, rattling off a list of symptoms: hot flashes and night sweats, feeling clammy, moodiness, palpitations, uncontrolled crying, trouble sleeping, no sex drive, vaginal dryness, feeling tired, confused and unfocused, anxiety, forgetfulness, incontinence, dry skin, hair loss or facial hair growth, bloating, cold extremities, bad breath.
“That is just horrible!” I said, cutting her off with a snort of disgust.
“There’s more,” she said with authority.
“No, Elsie, that’s okay. I’m quite sure now I’m barking up the wrong tree,” I said firmly.
“You’re kidding, right?” Elsie sputtered, aghast at my denial. “I’d say it’s irrefutable. You’re menopausal! Do you have a good doctor? I can recommend several.” Being a denizen of the medical publishing world, Elsie knew every doctor on the planet as well as half-a-dozen in the next galaxy.
“Uh, no, that’s okay,” I said, desperately wanting to get off the phone. “Can we pretend we never had this conversation? I have to check my wrinkles.”
“No,” Elsie shouted, exasperated. “Listen very carefully to me—get help!”
“That’s a little harsh isn’t it?” I started to whimper.
Elsie was always sympathetic until the whimpering started. She hung up on me. I stared at the dead phone for a second and then wandered upstairs for a little nap, grabbing a spoon and the leftover caramel ice cream from the freezer on the way. Who the heck could cope with all this, I muttered to myself, as I plopped onto my unmade bed, stainless steel spoon in mouth. Still, deep in my hormone-free brain, I was getting the distinct feeling that I had pretty much played out the dumb-denial card.
Denial is the Key to Surviving Menopause—Right?
There’s no question the Madonna dream was a desperately needed wake up call. It launched me on an adventure in understanding menopause—an adventure otherwise referred to as stalking the Pink Elephant. If the previous two years were any indication, I probably would have continued to do nothing, because, you see, I was in a deep freeze, a state of denial so intense that the very word, “menopause,” had been exorcised from my vocabulary.
I was incapable, for instance, of mustering the matter-of-factness that my friend, Jill, had about menopause. That would have been too sensible, too entirely unlike me.
“How’s it going?” I said, walking toward Jill in our cardio kick box class, a Sunday morning ritual. Jill had just turned 51. She was wrinkled from years of tanning in Italy (where else?) and was bemoaning how gi-normous she had become at a whopping 107 pounds instead of her usual 93 (Oh, those Sambuca’s just pack it on!). She was standing in front of a wall of mirrors, oblivious to everyone around her.
“Look at these!” she said, attacking her love handles with a fierce pinch. “Sickening.”
“At least they’ll always stay by your side,” I snickered. She glowered at me in the mirror. “You don’t look so good,” she added looking me up and down.
“Thanks for noticing,” I said flatly. “I don’t sleep anymore and would be happy to rip your head off it you think it’s too fat. My taste buds are officially monogamous. I only eat chocolate. And my idea of sex these days is wiping my ass. Other than that, I’m swell,” I said giving her a huge fake smile.
“Oh, I get it,” Jill said nodding mysteriously. “I went through all that.” She waved a finger in the general direction of my crotch. I looked between my legs and then back up at her.
“What are you talking about?” I demanded impatiently.
“Menopause, dummy,” Jill said loudly. A few people turned to look at her. I went red. “A nightmare,” she declared. “I tried everything. Finally my doctor shoved some estrogen-ring thing up there and I’m good to go. Except for this,” she looked down disdainfully at her expansive 24-inch waistline.
“You are so wrong on this Jill,” I said adamantly. “Look at me, I’ve got the body of a 21 year old!” I said with exaggerated gusto.
Jill looked at me and exploded in a guffaw. “And you think I’ve got head problems? Get real.”
Suddenly the music cranked on and Jill shuffled into her usual spot, jogging on the spot to warm up. I dropped to the back of the class, a big pout on my face. But as it was, it would take something far more shocking than Jill’s comment to snap me out of my menopause denial.
I saw my ass. And it was fat.
I had been watching a home movie one evening scrutinizing this flabby middle-aged woman as she slumped across a room with her back to the camera. I was about to say to my boyfriend, “who’s the fat ass?” when I realized in a flash of heart-exploding panic that the fat ass was me. My boyfriend tried to reassure me that the camera adds weight. “It doesn’t need to,” I screamed, as I ran to hide in the closet, under all those clothes that didn’t fit anymore.
Sometimes it takes a cold hard look to really get that you are not the 20-year old college dorm queen you used to be—all giggly, firm and fabulous. In an instant, I saw myself the way everyone else does—a sloppily aging woman skidding into flabby, fatigued obsolescence. Without even knowing it, I had been dismissed from the gene pool, left to watch from a frayed deck chair while all the other lithesome reproductive beings copulated with Darwinian intensity.
They mattered. They belonged. They would go on forever. They weren’t in menopause.
Instead of taking menopause calmly, perusing the scientific literature, and philosophically coming to an acceptance of biological fact, firmly centered in a secure sense of self, I shut down completely. Dropping into my favorite recliner, I flicked on the TV. And wouldn’t it be just my luck to catch a commercial for hormones showing a frantic menopausal woman wetting her finely tailored business suit in the middle of a critical board meeting, and then another with fury-filled eyes jumping out of bed to crank up the air conditioner full blast, not even her husband proving cold enough. These poor, melting menopausal women! How would they live without help from Premarin, now available in four dosage formulations, a little something for every hot flash?
I was glued to the TV, about ready to rip the stuffing out of the couch with my teeth, when I lost the remote under my ass. Squirming around to find it, I accidentally switched the channel to a Hip Hop video of gyrating estrogen-juiced teenage vixens. And that is exactly when I collapsed in a heap of tears half-screeching, “But I don’t want to take conjugated estrogens from horse pee—whatever the hell that is.”
Madonna, Menopause and Me…
…Otherwise known as the story of how I conquered menopause and restored my position as Mistress of My Universe. A story which may be of interest to you depending on where you’re at in life.
It’s a long story that starts with a short dream in which I am being sucked into the crack of a cat-clawed L-Z boy recliner. Just as I’m trying to snatch a brown bag filled with tiny sugar-dusted donuts (my favorite) off a side table, Madonna suddenly walks in sporting a vinyl black body suit and looking like Cat Woman. She snaps up the donut bag, pulverizing it between her hands. I wince as her biceps bulge.
“Whaddya think you’re doing there, tubby?” she snarls.
“Was trying to pack on some more weight until you came into the picture.” I shoot her a nasty glance.
“You mean you don’t want to look like me?” Madonna stares incredulous.
“Are you crazy?” I yell. “It’s enough that I’ve gone into menopause and lost control of my body. Now I’m supposed to look good, too? Who can handle all that pressure?” I shake my head and stare down at my knees, lodged a few inches under my chin.
“But you’ve completely let yourself go,” says Madonna with pity mixed with disgust.
“True, but this lazy boy is loving my ass,” I pat the sides of the recliner. “Anyway, Madonna, there’s no escaping the inevitable. All the yoga in the world won’t change the fact that I am your future.” I point my thumbs at my chest for emphasis.
“Madonna doesn’t do Menopause,” she snorts defiantly and turns away.
Now I’m staring. “You’re actually scared, aren’t you? What do you think is going to happen? One word and ‘pop’ goes the sex icon?” I look closely at her. It’s obvious I’ve hit a nerve. She was breathing hard and fast.
Madonna turns back to me, seemingly unimpressed. “Fat. Freak.”
That’s when I woke up, amazed that even in my dream, I wasn’t so crazy about myself. The worst part was that I’d been having variations on these I-am-so-fat dreams ever since I went into menopause a couple of years ago. But, Madonna in one of my menopause dreams? That was a new twist. Could it be she symbolized some sexier, skinnier part of me that disappeared when my hormones had flown bye-bye? And now, here I was, rolling around lost in Donut Land, swimming through chocolate rivers, and climbing up ice cream mountains—desperately searching for something but what?
Answers, maybe? A little control? Funny thing about menopause—it’s been vilified, objectified, glorified, “medicalized,” turned into a giant controversy, and even made into a musical, but in the end, it is mostly denied—what I call the “pink elephant” in a woman’s life. I don’t know about you, but I was raised with the reigning expectation that all this aging stuff and even death were optional. It was just a matter of time before we found cool new pills, injections, and surgeries to make it all go away.
Like I said, I’ve been in menopause for a couple of years now and those treatments are nowhere on the horizon. Sure there are the exterior renovations—the boob jobs, the Botox, the face lifts, the tummy tucks, the everything else. But you still feel blah inside, like an old bean bag that has lost half its stuffing. You add new stuffing, and you think you look the same as you did in your twenties, but everyone can see you’re just fooling yourself.
At least, that had been my experience until that fateful morning, after which everything changed. By the time I’d downed my third cup of coffee, I realized I’d been stuck in the jaws of the recliner far too long. The time had finally come to face my Pink Elephant. Maybe, just maybe, if I put my head to the matter, I could figure out how to get some control back into my life. Figure out just what, if anything, could be done about this menopause thing.
