50 Incoming

Earlier this week, I got some test results back from a lab. But before I go into those results, there are about three years of backstory I need to explain...quickly. Bear down. 

The pandemic began in March 2020, right? Two months later, in early May, my dad died of cancer. I was able to be with him for a couple of weeks before his death, for which I will be forever grateful. It was awful to see him in pain and so fragile and diminished. It was an incredible relief to watch my father's chest rise and fall for the last time. Two months later, I had an as yet unexplained heart attack. I was put on blood thinners in August as a precaution. The blood thinners made the fibroid tumors in my uterus and abdomen grow at an incredible rate to the point that I could no longer sit upright in a chair by the end of November. By January, I was completely bed ridden, the tumors were the size of a 24-week pregnancy, and they were pressing on one of my ureters causing fluid buildup and damage to one of my kidneys. I needed a hysterectomy sooner than later, but because of COVID, non-emergency surgeries were all cancelled. In early February, my OB/GYN was preparing to go before the Duke surgical board to plead my case the days that Duke lifted the non-emergency surgery ban. I had my hysterectomy the next week. She removed my uterus, a number of fibroids, and my fallopian tubes. I kept my ovaries.  

Six months later, we moved to Wilmington. For the last two and a half years, I have had little idea about where I am in my cycle or if I've even got a cycle at all. For the last year, I've felt the absolute deepest despair of my life. I've felt unmotivated, undesirable, lonely, unable to focus, unable to finish what I start, desperate—pitiful, really. I don't know anyone my age who has admitted to the same situation. 

Because of the difficulty I was having focusing, I asked my doctor if I might have ADD, and he recommended I see a psychiatrist who specializes in treating ADD. The shrink thought it was sleep-related because “there’s no such thing as adult-onset ADD.” I felt thoroughly dismissed, so I returned to my doctor and asked if my feelings could be hormone-related. He referred me to a clinic in Missouri that will do my hormonal testing and then set me up with a doctor who can prescribe hormone replacement therapy as needed.  My insurance doesn’t cover hormone testing, so I paid out of pocket and got my blood drawn at Lab Corps.  They never sent the results to the clinic as I had requested, so after a brief period of Marco Polo, I finally located and received my results this past Monday. I forwarded them to the clinic and immediately received notification that they wanted to go ahead and set up some telehealth appointments with a nurse practitioner and a physician.

I went back to the lab report to see if they might indicate why I needed two appointments. It was all right there in black and white: postmenopausal. Not perimenopausal. Postmenopausal.

Post

menopausal.

I was so relieved. And then devastated. I’m 49, about to turn 50 in two months. I already have gargantuan feelings about that. And now I’m officially postmenopausal. I didn’t think this would be such a big deal.  When I decided in my 20s that I wasn’t interested in having children, I wondered why I needed a cycle at all and prayed that I could rid myself of this hideous curse. Now that it’s gone, I feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me, and I can’t seem to catch my breath.

I’ve become an old, scratched, dented empty suitcase that’s been beat up by decades of overzealous baggage handlers, and now the zipper doesn’t work, the wheels don’t turn, and the handle won’t collapse properly. The travel stickers are all rubbed off so you can’t see where it’s been. Now it stands alone in the dark at the curb with all of the overfilled garbage cans waiting for the pre-dawn trash collectors to take it away to the landfill. That’s me.

I thought it would be a relief.  It was for about an hour. Now it’s not. What I’m left with is my remaining years filled with discomfort, aggravation, and disgust. Weight I can’t get off easily, a totally weird body, inappropriately overactive sex drive alternating with annoyingly underactive sex drive (Oh, no! They don’t tell you about that!), less hair in the proper places, more hair in the wrong places. And overall invisibility.

Yes, I’m overreacting. But that’s where I am right now. Wrapped up in the realization of my own cosmic irrelevance.