Flame On!
Or How to Internally Combust Every Evening
One of my favorite cartoon strips has been the Peanuts gang for their slice-of-life takes from a child’s eye point of view. Though my favorite characters are Snoopy and Linus, one of my favorite strip panels involves Charlie Brown’s little sister, Lucy, as she complains about boots, zippers, and mittens. The last panel is reserved for her tantrum, and it has been a steady mantra for me anytime the temperature dips below 68°F.
In fact, I prepare my friends for my annual impending disappearance, telling them in October that I will soon be going into hibernation. Hibernation means that there is limited social engagement if it requires me to come outside for anything other than the obligatory work schedule or school dropoff. I make very few exceptions to this rule, and they usually occur in January. Two of my friends are January babies, and so is my youngest Goddaughter, even though she is a grown adult with her own husband and kiddo now. The other notable exception is for the Teen kiddo, who is also a January baby, ironically enough, born on the week I reserve for vacations to warmer climates.
This year, I took hibernation to new levels, as I even refused to go to grocery stores, instead opting for not one, but three grocery deliveries from three different stores while I was on winter break. There were multiple successive days where I did not venture out at all; in fact, the first time I walked out the door in 2026 was four days after the new year began.
My hibernation habits have also been supported by working in an education environment that closes for two weeks in the winter. As I’ve gotten older, I have also taken extra days to enhance those two weeks, taking off somewhere close to a month. This past December, I only worked onsite six days.
There is a good reason for this self-imposed hibernation. I am a summer baby (yes, the beginning of September is still summer, even though school systems label it as fall). I function best in warm climates, and if asked, I normally choose the option to be hot rather than cold with the rationale that I can always take off layers, but putting on layers doesn’t always help in bitter cold. For the majority of my life, I have always been the first one affected by the cold. My office mates are used to seeing me in sweaters, scarves, gloves, earmuffs, or sitting under my heater when the first leaves fall from the trees.
Then came perimenopause, and all cold-naturedness went out the window. It’s at this point that I’m going to give the clinical mumbo-jumbo that women are fed: menopause is when the cycle has stopped for a year or more. Perimenopause is the purgatory, where women wait and make sure that cycle isn’t coming back.
I was introduced to it slowly at first, and I was in the beginning stages of widowhood at the time, so I wasn’t quite paying attention, thinking it was grief-related, and some of it may have been. It just happened to be the perfect storm of conditions that let it slip in unnoticed. I had a loss of appetite, lethargy, and I wasn’t sleeping through the night.
Then my period started making guest appearances. That was a huge red (excuse the color pun) flag. Sorry menfolk: TMI shared here. In fact, apologies to all folk because you’re about to know way more about me than you asked for.
I started my period at 12. I remember this distinctly because it was the day I got baptized. Aside from the general unease of being dipped in salty creek water by the pastor while the deacons were swiping jellyfish away, I was wearing all white: a white swimcap, a white shirt, a white tee-shirt, a white training bra, and WHITE SHORTS.
I came up out of the water as a new creature: a woman. Being completely wet soon gave those white shorts a tell-tale light pink stripe, not the more embarrassingly bright red stain they might have otherwise developed. Luckily, I was in the back seat of my cousin’s car with a towel wrapped around my waist. We were able to rush back home, which was only five minutes away, and I had time to properly prepare myself before church. Ever since then, my cycle had been a steady presence with only a few notable absences, the largest one starting in June of 2010 (more about my gracious Father’s Day gift to Lane in another post). In fact, thanks to the book Color Me Menopausal, a fun-ish activity book that sprinkles in facts about this change, I’ve found out that I have endured 37 years of periods, which equates to 459 of them, adding up to between 2,295 and 3,213 days. Seriously, the book has a whole calculating page. What’s creepier is that I added in my own calculation that this was roughly 6 - 8 years of my life. Murderers have gotten less time.
I won’t go any further because periods can be a whole rant unto themselves.
Even the first time I had night sweats didn’t fully signal that menopause was on the horizon, especially since they too were at first intermittent, happening only occasionally and so infrequently that they could be excused with something else that was going on with my body. In my usual nighttime fashion, I would be bundled up: in a sweater, a sweatshirt, or a fuzzy robe, because I always seemed to be colder at night. Then around 11pm, I would have to take off the extra outer layer to be comfortable.
In the last year, I started noticing.
The night sweats began coming with shocking regularity. In fact, almost every evening, I get HOT. No need for bundling up anymore.
It’s not the normal warming of the body that comes when someone sweats after a workout. It is an actual internal combustion that radiates through the skin. I am convinced that I am slowly crockpot-cooking my organs. I have accepted that these are now full-blown hot flashes as I regularly get them at least three times a day, so far mostly at night before bed and twice in the morning—within an hour of awakening, and right before I leave for work in the morning.
If I had to pinpoint which flash was the worst of the three, it would have to be the one that occurs right before I leave the house. Its severity was not as noticeable during summer and fall, but as the temps got cold, I was forced to pay more attention because now, each morning when I put on a coat to leave the house, I have to hurriedly exit because the overheating that is generated is indescribable. Trust me, I tried coming up with words, and the reliving was traumatizing, even though I actively experience this dilemma daily. When the weather was first starting to change, and I consistently needed a coat, the first few days of fall, I would carry the coat from the house to the car, just so I would have a chance to cool off. This probably was not the wisest idea because it meant I was damp leaving out and exposing myself to cold air. That brief bad habit probably contributed to the horrendous heebie jeebies I caught right as the semester closed.
As an aside, I will say that this cold or flu or whatever kind of cootie I had was one of the worst of my life. In addition to two nosebleeds, I coughed so much that my ribs were hurting. I now know how a boxer feels after a fight, regardless of whether they win or lose.
These hot flashes need to stay in those moments, if not dissipate altogether. I had two out-of-body experiences outside of the home and outside of the normal time frame. One was while I was visiting my mother-in-law’s church. The pastor there may have thought I was catching the Holy Ghost by the way I was fanning, but there was nothing holy about the possession I felt as I asked for one. I even heard my voice change in desperation.
The second flash occurred one morning after I made it all the way to my desk at work. I turned the fan I have in my office cubicle on high and hovered over it like I was preparing for the iFly experience (a phrase which will always make me think of Trish).
I get so overheated that I have to keep my car defroster on because I steam up all the windows! These sweats are no joke, as you can see from the video below :
Thankfully, there seems to be a natural remedy, and it is hydration.
Because it’s winter, it is harder to drink ice water, so I have to switch to room temperature, warm, or even hot water to keep my hydration up, but water before bed and when I first wake up offers relief. I’m not just talking a few gentle sips, but rather full-on stand-by-the-sink-and-refill cups of water. The sweet spot seems to be two 16-ounce cups, though be forewarned: morning room temperature water is also a powerful laxative (again TMI, but you need ot know this for your own good).
To avoid ending on a shitty note (horrible pun intended), I wish these night sweats at least had the audacity to sweat some fat cells away. But alas, another symptom of perimenopause is weight gain, and I really did not need help on that front.