Menopause and Cleaning

Menopause and Cleaning
February 2000

Over my dating and marriage lifetime I've met and been with women who have experienced their menstrual cycles in very different ways. That is WE have experienced their cycles. It's never just one person going through the "excitement" of it all. I've known some women who seem to be going through PMS all the time. I don't wish this on either partner. This is the manifestation of one of those Chinese curses; "May you live in 'interesting' times."!!!

Then I have been with women who don't go through anything. "What cycle?" they say. After the former I always wished I had married the latter.

When I met Elizabeth, she was more latter than former. Things were very predictable and on a regular schedule. Two days before her menses began she would question the wisdom of our having a relationship. One day before, the bathroom would get clean. When I say "clean" I don't mean as in "straightened up", I mean VERY, VERY clean. This was on-the-knees-with-toothbrush stuff.

Then the next day all would be well and both relationship and bathroom would go along as usual. That is to say, smooth sailing.

Weeks would go by and then one day she would call the relationship into question again and thus, I began to know when the bathroom would be "purified". In between there was amnesia on her part for all of this.

Once I adjusted to both the predictability of the event and the inevitability of the amnesia things were fine. But then along came the monkey wrench of the Gods; MENOPAUSE!

As with cycles, different women experience this differently. As do their partners. For some women menopause is an event that happens one day and then it's over. "What WAS that?" they say, trying hard to remember, and then, having no luck, they go on with their lives.

For others, it's WW III. And there is no armistice being negotiated anywhere on the planet.

Our experience was somewhere in between these two extremes. We're both sort of average after all.

For about a year, Elizabeth began a totally unpredictable questioning-of-the-relationship thing. I adjusted to this the best I could, but the problem was; the bathroom only got cleaned sporadically and in an uncharacteristically haphazard way. Without the toothbrush attack I could no longer be assured that we were approaching the end of the chaos.

She experimented with every natural product promoted by the
don't-use-estrogen lobby from acupuncture to sinister sounding stuff like; "Black Cohosh" or "Dongqui" and other mysterious potions along with massage, meditation, etc. nothing worked to diminish what she, and we, were going through. Finally, having researched and exhausted every known, suspected and hoped-for remedy for over a year, she had to do hormone replacement therapy....and it worked.

Everything calmed down. She slept at night, aches and pains disappeared, her skin was less dry, her moods stabilized and, once again, our relationship floated upon calm seas.

There were losses of course. There was some diminishment of sex drive and we have to be alert to get breast exams and pap smears on a regular basis. We do our own blood pressure checks and get plenty of exercise.

There is one problem however. The bathroom is just not getting the attention it used to. I try to keep it up to a standard but it doesn't come anywhere near the good old days of the investigate-the-relationship-and-weld-the-
toothbrush cycle.

EVERYTHING is a trade off.

Coyote On Coyote - More about Coyote by Dick Prosapio

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