I know there’s a whole bunch of people saying otherwise, but drugs are sometimes best. Take for example — oh, I don’t know — menopause. The only benefit I can see to ‘the change’ is that, for lucky folk, you’ll have a decent credit score. Some folks get this through hard work, others through inheritance or ill-gotten gains, but the chances are — if you’re menopausal — you’ll be floating around ‘middle-age’, and probably as income-rich as you’ll ever be.
“Here — have these SPECIAL vitamin tablets…they’re GOOD for you, and ONLY costs $88”.
This is what happens when you start to feel older. It puts you in a position of both power and desperation: The financial power to pay for utter bollocks, and the desperation to consider buying into it.
That’s why being plunged into this stuff a bit earlier than normal — already ‘past it’, the young side of ‘past it’, but ‘past it’, even so — is rubbish. £90 jade eggs, spirulina smoothies, “summer vaginas”, c’mon, besides anything they’re pret-ty pricey things to stock up on.
Clearly, this stuff is ridiculous, although — if you have the spare cash — why not? It’s your choice. A fancy lifestyle CAN make things easier. And who doesn’t want a special jade egg to insert up their bits?
Sarcasm aside, recently my vertigo/dizziness made me desperate. It’s very frustrating being dizzy throughout the day, and with long waiting lists to see a medic, it seemed sensible to take matters into my own hands. I figured that I couldn’t go one feeling dizzy all day. As my GP suspected that the dizziness was menopause related, but didn’t want to mess about with my HRT without specialist input, we initially decided to wait for my gynae appointment — unfortunately the appointment got pushed back.
The problem is, there’s a mishmash of information around, and it’s easy to get sucked into something when you’re struggling. There are plenty of healthy things that helped, but none of them completely eradicated the dizziness. Whether I was eating antioxidant-rich foods, reducing stress, exercising — everyday I ended up feeling like I was stuck on the world’s crappiest whirly-gig. I was totally fed up. I started to think that it was all in my head, so imagine how brilliant it was when, after bothering my GP once more, they prescribed Prochlorperazine and cured my dizziness like…
It’s true that drugs aren’t always good for you, but sometimes they’re just the ticket. Yesterday, I looked at the long list of side-effects for Prochlorperazine — a fun bunch of ailments — but my main interest at the moment is a short term fix for the dizziness. These pills aren’t something I’ll stay on for long, but my world is much less ‘spinny’ nowadays, which is brilliant.
For me, drugs can be the equivalent of a retreat. Staying on these pills is not part of the plan, but they do help when things become too much. Before menopause, I had a healthy, med-free life, which was something I was quite pleased about. Now, the rules have changed. It’s not always a slog, but it does mean that a few crappy side-effects can wear me down.
I’m lucky to get the support I do from the doctors and nurses out there. I’m also lucky because people talk more openly about menopause these days. If you pick up a newspaper, it often has an interesting, well-informed article or two about menopause. Menopause is less of a void than it was before, but — obviously — after the pandemic it’s harder to get appointments. Celebrities, by extension, have sort of latched onto it. So, a Google search for menopause support returns all sorts of stuff, from glib crud about glorified smoothies, or ‘health-boosting’ enemas, to really brilliant advice and support.
The problem of shifting through this advice is tricky because with an overstretched healthcare system, who’s to say it’s not worth taking a shot in the dark and splashing out on this or that? There’s something for everybody: essential oils, melatonin rich foods, breathing techniques, exercise routines. What works for me, might not work for you; there’s a bit of trial and error that’s required, and sometimes a short cause of medication can help you get flare ups.
In the long-run, sometimes celebrities make it easy for me to glorify one thing over another — their lives flanked by things I’ll never have access to, making me believe that such-and-such a supplement will fix my dizziness, without medical input. I’m guessing if I had the financial clout, these things might make me feel better, but I’m certain just being incredibly wealthy would definetely make me feel better. Celebrities are wrong to declare the successes of their lifestyle routine as proof that their magic smoothies — or whatever — deserves not only women’s respect, but women’s money, and medical validity.
It’s a dangerous precedent. One that I have to be careful of when my symptoms flare up and got on top of me.
