Nobody can deny the very real affect that a woman’s monthly cycles have on our ability to focus, complete tasks, deal with stress, and myriad other things. But knowing how changing levels of estrogen and progesterone affect our moods and physicality doesn’t make dealing with these sometimes drastic shifts any easier.
In college, I was a night owl, preferring the quiet hours from midnight until sunrise for reading, writing, and researching. I would sit in the common room on the first floor of my college dorm and chain smoke (back in the days when smoking indoors was still legal, albeit disgusting) and write in my journal (this was, also, back in the days before personal computers were a thing) and listen to the birds waking up the world with their busy chatter.
My favorite hours to finally crawl into bed, under the covers, and sleep were from 6 am until 10 or 11, emerging in time to join friends for the lunch wave in the cafeteria, then back to the dorms for afternoon naps before waking to study and attend evening classes. On days I had a morning class, to be sure they were never scheduled before 10 am if I could help it.
Then I got older, joined the work force, and had to alter my schedule (slightly) to accommodate business hours. Before I started teaching full time, work was not so demanding that I couldn’t go out 2-3 nights a week, stay up until midnight, and still function reasonably well the next day. Becoming a teacher put a hard stop to weeknight adventures: by the time I dragged myself in the door at 3:30 pm, I could barely make it to the couch with my stacks of papers (being that this was still back in the day when schoolwork was done on paper instead of Google Classroom) to sit for the rest of the afternoon and evening attempting to make a dent in the piles while binge watching Law and Order: SVU (sorry, kids, if this made for distracted grading; back in those days I still believing that multitasking was a real thing). I would stay in the grading/tv watching zone until 10 or 11 pm, then drag myself into bed, cringing as I set my alarm for 5:30 am, and do the whole thing over the next day. Although I always daydreamed of “catching up” on sleep over the weekend, my internal clock was determined to wake me by 6:30 or 7 am at the latest, and usually in a panic because I thought I’d overslept and missed my alarm and would be late for class.
Having children caused my circadian rhythms even more confusion, as I’d find myself falling asleep while rocking the babies to bed or snuggling the toddlers to sleep or scratching the adolescents’ backs until their incessant chatter about the day’s drama slurred into sleepy sibilance, only to wake with a start an hour or two later to finish making lunches, loading the dishwasher, folding laundry, or posting the next day’s announcements on Google Classroom for my students.
Despite all of the flexibility required of life, I remained a good sleeper. I played hard during waking hours and fell asleep within minutes of my head hitting the pillow. Then suddenly in my mid-forties, I would find myself waking with a start in the middle of the night, staring wide-eyed into the darkness wondering what it was that made my heart beat so fervently in my chest I thought it was trying to release itself from my ribcage. These nocturnal jolts became prolonged periods of restlessness became productive overnight shifts until eventually, I found myself getting fewer and fewer hours of sleep each night. After months of averaging 4-5 hours of sleep, I was no longer able to function like a human being should. I cried easily, lost my daytime appetite, fell into a pattern of fasting all day and eating all night, and my sleep became even more interrupted.
It took another year to finally convince my doctors, and myself, that I needed help. When I tell you I tried everything, I tried everything: meditation, yoga, apps; ashwaghanda, valerian root, vitamin D, E, magnesium, calcium; Benadryl, Xanax, a variety of antidepressants; CBD and THC of various increments and varieties. I increased the intensity of my exercise; I decreased the intensity of my exercise. I avoided stimulants like coffee and chocolate; I drank warm milk; I changed pillows and beds and sheets. Finally, after months of waking up clammy in sweat-soaked pajamas, I asked my gynecologist to test my hormone levels. Could this all be symptoms of menopause? When she laughed me off as “too young” (43) and refused to run the tests, I changed doctors and found an endocrinologist to boot. Finally, at 45, I got confirmation and validation: yes, in fact, my hormone levels were “consistent with menopause.”
Also consistent with menopause: brain fog, irritability akin to my premenstrual adolescent years, increasingly consistent and debilitating bouts of migraine, and mood swings. I went from over-productive to barely functional without rhyme or reason. I ate everything in sight; I ate nothing for days. So much of the problem with humans – women especially – is that we are so oblivious to the obvious patterns and cycles that rule our lives. Humans also have an incredible ability to forget (or bury) trauma and move forward. No sooner had I left my PMS behind did I forget how painfully and awfully both my emotional and physical being suffered for so many years of my life. So much so that when all of the familiar cycles started to impact me again, they might as well have been brand new symptoms.
I blame Western medicine for the lack of awareness and validation of women’s emotional and physical lives. Far too often, we are laughed at when we complain of our symptoms, or patronized and told what we were experiencing is “normal.” Most doctors – female ones included – discount the real physical pain and emotional tyranny we manage on the regular. When we cannot continue to function and become enslaved by our emotions, we’re given Xanax and Valium like they are breath mints. We’re put on antidepressants and Adderall, told to “call with any changes or questions,” and sent on our way to suffer in silence.
Finally, after two years of erratic sleep, I asked my neurologist for something to help me sleep. I was exhausted from waking with migraines, strung out from cycles of steroids to treat them, and unable to focus at work because I was too tired to follow through on tasks. Even after everything I’d been going through, I was ashamed and embarrassed to even ask. I felt like a drug-seeking addict who would be reported to the AMA. God bless her, but she didn’t make me ask twice and she didn’t blink an eye while writing the scrip. The office doesn’t question my request for refills, and I’m able to sleep a glorious 6-8 hours when I take it at bedtime.
The most infuriating thing is, I don’t always need it and I still feel guilty when I do. I play games with myself the way I used to with migraines: do I really need it, or will an OTC remedy be enough? Some nights I still fall asleep without issue only to find myself awake at 3 am–too late to take something and too early to get up and function until 9 pm. What is my resistance to being dependent on pharmaceuticals for optimal health? If I were a diabetic, would I eschew the insulin my body needed to function properly? If I had high blood pressure, would I deny myself the medication to keep it at healthy levels? The only answer I have at the moment is a strange addiction women seem to have to martyrdom–that or an inherent belief that our suffering is not worthy of salvation. I’ll have to sleep on it–and thankfully, I’ve got the tools to be able to do just that, at least for tonight.
(mostly) full disclosure 