Perimentalpause

Hi everyone

Help. 

I have recently discovered Perimenopause.  Not because I'm going through it - but my partner is.  We are both female which may, I hasten to add, exacerbate the effects on both of us.

I should make it clear at this point that my partner is in total agreement with me writing here - she knows exactly what I'm saying.  I would never belittle her in any way, but we are both pretty humorous people (well we were before PM loomed it's filthy head anyway), and this transition is having a serious negative impact on our lives.  We are trying to introduce humour, but it really isn't funny very often.  (I am trialling a new blog to see if there is anybody out there who is feeling the same way ? ).  

My partner is 46 and we have been together for 8 years.  I am 34.  She has always been a fun loving, caring, low maintenance great girl.  In recent years she has started to turn into what can only be described as a monster.  Neither of us were aware of the hell that is Perimentalpause.  I had begun to become used to her "mood swings", simply attributing them to "hormones" (us females love the phrase "time of the month" hey"!).  However, one night -  I'll call it "Meringue night", I realised that this may be something more sinister than your average "Aunt Flo" is visiting time of the month.

We were "happily" making Easter meringues for my partner's sister's friends.  We were chatting away and decorating them at the table, and then my partner dropped hers, face down on the floor.  What followed fully introduced me to the world of Jekyll and Hyde that Perimenopause causes.  My partner, having been laughing hysterically only 47 seconds prior, looked at the floor and started to cry.  I said, "Don't worry baby, it's just a meringue", to which she replied, "well it's not just a meringue is it", started to sob and then farted and walked away.  I thought, "oh s**t, there is something more up here than regular PMT".

That's the worst thing about it - she has never suffered from PMT.  It's just that since she hit her mid - 40s, she has become a weeping, shouting, farting monster for a few weeks of the month.  How is this fair?!  I never know whether to get her a tissue, a toilet roll or give her a Gaviscon.  I don't know from one minute to the next whether she's going to love me to the point of weeping or scream at me to the point of me weeping.

?Her symptoms have ranged from minor to MAJOR, and include the following:

?- anxiety (this is the worst one for her - she never used to panic about anything and now she can barely climb the stairs or get on or off a train at certain times of the month)

?- reflux (she just belched upstairs so that prompted me to write this one down next)

- tinnitus

?- itchy skin (really bad)

?- SEVERE mood swings

- cold sweats (they are rancid and make her feel like she's dying)

?- heightened sensitivity to allergies.  She's never had hayfever and yet the past couple of years she literally has had it all year round.  We discovered Piriton, which helps, but knocks her out as it makes her so drowsy. 

- wind (seriously, WTAF?!?!)

?- crushing fatigue

- breathlessness

?- increased sex drive leading up to ovulation (not complaining!), and then decreased for the rest of the month

- lethargy

?- apathy (this is heartbreaking for me to see - she was SO full of life and positivity before this s**t hit)

?Is this really it for the next few years?  We think it's been going on for approx 3/4 years already.  She has regular periods and so we know a GP won't be able to "do anything".  She is literally on about 9 vitamins a day.  We have both felt despair, hopelessness and helplessness.  We are intelligent, funny women, but this Perimenopause hell is slowly transforming the pair of us into exhausted, emotional wrecks who don't know which way to turn.  Is there anybody out there in a similar situation?

?Thanks for reading 

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