Fishy Flushy Fleshy

2013

I found this piece hiding, I think it is from April, a month after leaving the nicotine trail, so glad that although there is a definite correlation with the sweats I haven’t started again so that’s 8 months and counting

After spending the night in one, long continuous hot flush again. I mean it is not like this night is in some way different to the last five. No, each night has done exactly the same thing. At four this morning I was waiting for sleep, seriously waiting for sleep to come. Up to that point, I put the worlds to rights, hoped for my family and church family and decided on the plot for three short stories.

My problem is I love to sleep, I need to sleep, if I don’t sleep and run on empty for too long I start to get pre-syncope symptoms.

I need to sleep.

My hot flushes have been intense since March 23rd, that is more than a month, I thought it was a cyclical thing, I even didn’t have chocolate on Easter Sunday but that might have been memories of last year [not pretty]

This week I made a correlation between the rash over half my body and the hot flushes and the correlation went further and now I don’t know what to do.

I sit here in a puddle of sweat, beads of which are travelling down my face and back. I mean worst thing ever, relatively, feeling drips of water go down your chin.

[Hot flashes] are the prime cause of sleep disruption in women over age fifty, Suzanne Woodward of Wayne State University School of Medicine reports. Her studies show that hot flashes in sleep occur about once an hour. Most prompt an arousal of three minutes or longer. Independently of their hot flashes, women who have them still awaken briefly every eight minutes on average. The sleep process dramatically blunts memory for awakenings, Woodward said, and in the morning women seldom realize how poorly they slept. Instead, they often focus on the daytime consequences of poor sleep, which include fatigue, lethargy, mood swings, depression, and irritability. Many women and their doctors, Woodward said, dismiss such symptoms as “just menopause.” This is a mistake, she suggested, because treatment can reduce or eliminate hot flashes, aid sleep, relieve other symptoms, and improve a woman’s quality of life. Treatment also helps keep frequent awakenings from becoming a bad habit that continues after hot flashes subside.”
― Michael Smolensky, The Body Clock Guide to Better Health: How to Use your Body’s Natural Clock to Fight Illness and Achieve Maximum Health

WHAT TREATMENT?
  • Stress
  • Caffeine
  • Alcohol
  • Spicy foods
  • Tight clothing
  • Heat
  • Cigarette smoke
Other things you can do to keep hot flashes at bay include:
  • Stay cool. Keep your bedroom cool at night. Use fans during the day. Wear light layers of clothes with natural fibers such as cotton.
  • Try deep, slow abdominal breathing (six to eight breaths per minute). Practice deep breathing for 15 minutes in the morning, 15 minutes in the evening and at the onset of hot flashes.
  • Exercise daily. Walking, swimming, dancing, and bicycling are all good choices.
  • Chill pillows; cooler pillows to lay head on at night might be helpful.
This is not of God, no part of this hot flush system is my Lord, it is not part of this new creation. 
This was written by a man.
 Take away everything that could be considered nice and then see if they go.
 So then I would be an uptight hot flushing type of a woman...

And then get thee to a health store sister because everyone, and I mean everyone has a cure for cold sweats and hot flushes: I might name the first eleven things that spring to mind, black cohosh, self-heal, cabbage leaves.

Oh Lord, I feel like I am suffering the dance of the seven swords but, to be honest, it is just a couple of symptoms and life will carry on. Thank you for my life, indeed thank you for the flushes they have taught me much already, amen.