Guest post by Swamp Mama, who turned 80 in January 2023. She grew up in North Carolina and has lived in Seattle for 30 years. She spent 30 years screening pap smears as a career.
I took hormone replacement for probably 10 years. I did not request it. It was prescribed when perimenopause was leading to a period every other week. I stopped taking it when the big study about it was published.
With almost no family history I was diagnosed with breast cancer 5 years ago. I have wondered if the hormone replacements were responsible.
When I stopped the hormones, I had significant hot flashes which lasted for about two years. Now, at 79, I occasionally (maybe once a month) will have one, but as one woman put it, I can wear turtle necks again.
Menopause definitely affected my libido. Sex became a duty instead of a pleasure, and, I think, requires a very understanding patient partner.
It is wonderful that times have changed enough that we can talk about it. I remember when I was about 6 (about 1950) sitting on my grandmother’s front porch and listening to her and her friend talking about bleeding and hot flashes. In those days women had only each other with whom they could discuss problems and how they were being affected.
In my opinion, medical science STILL has not figured out what to do with old women. We were supposed to have our babies and die. Men then kept marrying younger women and the cycle repeated. Now that science has mostly figured out how to make childbirth safe for the mother, we are living long enough to become problems!
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This post is part of a series, Menopause and Me.
Feature image by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash
3 Responses
Thank you for sharing your experience, Swamp Mama. I am so glad that women can become old, we need you to show us how to do it.
Yes! I’m 73, but after a complete hysterectomy at 45 my body changed in unexpected ways, I thought that taking estrogen might be better than my poorly functioning hormone system. Ha! Then I had a blood clot in my leg, so no more hormones for me. I have a whole series of requests for my resurrected body! But I am mostly enjoying old age.
In the old days, any woman who was lucky enough to survive childbirth and disease and live to an older age invested in helping her children raise Their children because she had no personal resources due to the nature of Western male property inheritance. So society valued old women for their caregiving role. Now old women may have money, may not take care of the grandkids because they are pursuing personal goals, and speak their minds. That IS trouble. LOL.