The Change

And why I love it

In three beautiful words:

No. More. Periods!

I started later than my younger sister which was a great source of anguish and embarrassment to me. Mother warned me to enjoy not having periods while I could and the woman knew what she was talking about.

By my third period I was bedridden for days with excruciating cramps and nausea. Mother’s solution: a big glass of Grampa Nick’s home-brewed red wine, room temperature. Down it fast. So then I was woozy, cramping and sick to my stomach. Nice try, Mom.

I’m one of the lucky ones whose system could tolerate even the earlier, rougher versions of birth control pills. I’ve been on the pill most of my adult life and it was only because of those little pills that I’ve been able to have a life. Otherwise I’d have spent four out of every twenty eight days over the course of forty years in bed, in misery, unable to show up for work or writing or loved ones.

I used to take little vacations from the pill to see how bad the periods had gotten. One was usually all it took to send me racing back to my chemical savior.

Even so, I question the design chops of whatever evolutionary force came up with the period. Not ever having been in heat (that I know of), I can’t say that that’s a better system but this one is ridiculous. I mean, come on!

Nothing separates the sexes so definitively.

Men don’t have to put their lives on hold every twenty eight days because they’ve got blood coming from between their legs. They don’t have manage careers, children, home, creativity while doubled over with cramps. Plus they don’t have to put up with men making faces and asking if they really have to go buy tampons and Midol (and, yes yes yes, men have their own issues that I am not minimizing or glossing over. Feel free to write about those issues, gentlemen, I hear Medium is a great forum for that kind of thing).

But while generations of women have been debilitated by a monthly cycle of pain, sickness, and misery, men have been writing great literature, building great buildings, thinking great thoughts. This isn’t to say there haven’t been scores of women writing, creating, building, and thinking. But they were just women so no one paid much attention (watch for another piece on that can o’worms!).

And then….a miracle

When I was 52 and took one of my regular little vacations from the pill a funny thing happened. Instead of getting the period from hell I was expecting, I began to notice that suddenly the AC in the office wasn’t working properly. Yes, friends, it was The Change. My first hot flashes or, as my younger friends prefer, power surges.

Again the gods of hormones have been gentle with me. With my lady doctor’s blessing I’ve been taking a very light dose of estrogen (the pill) on alternate days all through the fun house of menopause. This has kept the power surges from frying everything behind my eyeballs as well as eliminating nausea, headaches, sleeplessness, and general off the charts crankiness. It’s also preserved some semblance of my formerly roaring libido and this makes me and my partner happy.

There was a time when women had no options. They bled every month, took care of everything that needed taking care of while sick, cramping, and miserable and they tended to have a baby every year and a half to two years. No wonder convents were a viable alternative.

Can I tell you how wonderful it is to never have a period? To not have to lay in supplies? To not have to consider when to schedule a trip? To simply wake up every day and go on about my life without ever once having to stop and count the days. Nirvana, baby.

And if all this means I’m “old”, bring it on.

I can do old with a ton more style, attitude and energy than I ever brought to my monthly dance with biology.

Change is good.

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