I started getting hot flashes when I was forty. After thirty-four years, you’d think they would slow down. I mean really. At my age, I’ve “been there—done that” to a whole bunch of stuff, and certainly don’t need reminders of my age or sex.
When I was forty, I knew they would continue into old age, which I considered to be fifty, but thought they surely would subside. Talk about foolish! But at age fifty, they went from mildly warm to raging even though AARP reminded me that I was already at the status of senior citizen. Jump ahead, ten more years, age sixty, and I was getting saggier and baggier, so sleeveless shirts and shorts didn’t work anymore, but the hot flash furnace burned on and I bought multiple fans. Now in my seventies, even though they have slowed down, my body still burns bright several times a week. When are they going away? Dag nabbit!
If I mention this to my physician, she’d likely shake her head and think, silly old woman, hot flashes can’t be that bad,because she’s only about thirty years old and probably doesn’t yet understand what it means to be sitting at a lovely lunch downtown only to rush out into the street, leaving behind your lovely glass of wine, so that you can tend to the sprinkler system (AKA your hormones) suddenly soaking your hair and clothes. Anyway, she’d probably just offer some pills, which I don’t want, and wouldn’t take anyway.
Just growing old obviously isn’t enough to extinguish hot flashes, but I am sure that if I just wait until I’m eighty, one of the tech companies will say, “We have an app for that.”
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