Okay, so sort of how the window opened, or the door opened, or everything opened for me around perimenopause was, I had an experience with a new sexual partner. And, I was also, like, in the midst of moving between different places, and I had a terrible yeast infection and also tearing in the, like, entryway into my vagina. And I was like, ” that’s really weird.” There was nothing extraordinary about this particular situation, so I just felt all of a sudden like, “What’s going on with my body?”
And I went to CVS or Walgreens or whatever, and I got Monistat, and I treated that, and it came back and went away and came back and went away. But I was really concerned about the tear, and then I realized that there was another tear. So there was a tear at the entryway, there was a tear another way. And I went to get STI tested and everything was clear, and I was outside of normal insurance healthcare because I was traveling. I went to Planned Parenthood, and they took a look, and she said [that] it looks just like vaginal tearing and that you’re in this time where your skin might be thinning. She prescribed me some topical estradiol and told me specifically that I should get it from Cost Plus, Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus, because it was gonna be $11 instead of $40 or whatever. So I did, and I followed the protocol, and it helped a lot. And I think it’s even helped with orgasms also.
And I still feel like the skin is a little bit thin. But I’m just very, very happy that I was able to go to Planned Parenthood because then when I got to a new doctor and I started talking to her about it, she didn’t even really wanna talk to me. She’s like, “Whatever you got at Planned Parenthood, I will give it to you.” And I was like, ” Should I keep doing the same dosage and the way that they had told me to do it?” And the doctor was like, “Sure.” And then I got the directions. There weren’t even really any instructions, and it had the black box label, you know, warning that this is gonna cause cancer.
But then I started talking to her. I was like, “So if this is happening, obviously I’m starting to — and my friends and I are talking about rage and all the, like, frozen shoulder and other things — so, like, I’m ready. Let’s talk about it.” And she was like, “Well, do you have regular menstrual cycles?” And I was like, “Yeah.” She’s like, “Well, then there’s nothing to talk about.” And so that was just sort of my introduction to like, okay, something happened to me, and I sought help from a doctor who gave me a prescription, but then, there’s still no standard of care. There’s no standardization, and so I really realized again why I had to learn more about my health and start to advocate for myself again and then look for other women to talk to about it.
And it brings up a little bit of grief too, because my mom had cancer, so she had post-cancer hormone induced menopause. And she passed. And so there’s there’s not a lot of women that I’m blood related to that I can say, “Hey, what happened to you? How old were you?”
It’s a little bit irritating to think about how there’s more work to… Like now I have to figure out my own journey, which is also exciting ‘cause, you know, I want to. But yeah…and I wanna keep having sex.
Are you talking to your friends about this? Like, do you have a community of people who are also going through symptoms that you’re talking to?
Yes. Other friends, other symptoms. But I feel like we learn a lot too from elders in our family and specific times that things could happen or not happen. I’m 46, and my sister is younger than me, and she hasn’t had a period in over a year. And I think some people have had children or haven’t had children or different things.