Holy Freaking Guacamole: What to expect when you are expecting Perimenopause Part 2

Y'all.  I have become the Pied Piper of perimenopause, scaring the bejeesus out of all the women younger than I am by leading them down a trail of the future horrors they are going to face.

Ok, so maybe I'm exaggerating for effect. OR MAYBE I AM NOT.

I've already shared about the frozen fricking shoulder, which is doing better in that it hurts less, but I still can't move it very well.  Wine consumption has gotten less fraught, but I can really only have a glass or two at most without repercussions.

 But wait, there's more!

So let's just roll this out in story form, ok?

So last Sunday was Mother's day.  I woke up early per usual. A few hours later the kids came down and were snuggling on me for extra lovings for my special day.  All of a sudden, Christopher goes "MOMMY! Your EYE!!! What's wrong?! It has BLOOD in it!!"

Indeed.

I went to the bathroom and saw a spreading blossom of bright red in my right eye. That's weird, I thought. Let me see what Dr. Google has to say.  Since I wasn't coughing, sneezing, or had trauma to my eye, I decided to check my blood pressure.  145/95.

Indeed.

I have had very low blood pressure most of my life.  I'm usually around 105/70.  Dave and I compete over who has the lowest blood pressure and I always win.  If I ever get a score over 110, I ask for a repeat and do deep breathing.  The one time I have not had low blood pressure was when I had preeclampsia with the twins, and had to take Blood Pressure meds for 3 months afterwards. I had forgotten about that until this week.

ANYHOO, back to the story.

It's been a stressful few weeks. Thinking that my anxiety had caused a blood pressure spike,  I took a Lorazepam and meditated for a bit.  Then I decided to take a shower and get ready for the day.  All of a sudden, a wave of nausea and heat came through my body.  My vision started to tunnel and I felt very, very strange.  I took my blood pressure again and it was 170/110.  Oh, dear. I took another Lorazepam.

Dave and I started to head to urgent care, but a friend who is a nurse suggested I lie on my left side and deep breathe for 5 minutes.  I do. And my BP goes down to 135/95.  I decide to hang out on the sofa for a while.  Plus I'm so freaking stoned from the Lorazepam, I don't really have many options.

The next morning, I email my primary doc (male) who says it's stress and I should continue taking my anti-anxiety meds.  Since I'm still hanging around 135 to 140/95, I dutifully take my meds. I also spent most of Monday like a zombie.

Here's a newsflash: When I have anxiety, a Lorazepam makes me normal.  When I'm not having anxiety (and I usually don't and I usually DON'T take Lorazepam), I have discovered that it sedates me way, way too much.  (And I take the lowest dose) Y'all: there is NO WAY that episode on Sunday was an anxiety attack.  I'd already taken medicine and I had meditated. I would have to have some serious skillz to be having an anxiety attack that cause my blood pressure to spike that high.  It wasn't anxiety. It was something else.

So I had another episode on Tuesday, with another very high spike in BP.  My regular doc was on vacation so I went in to see another one.  A WOMAN.  Of a certain age.  She did NOT think I had anxiety.  She said, Yes!  You are having high blood pressure; the intake reading of 150/92 and her viewing my medical record with its history of being very low might have helped.  GUESS WHAT SHE SAID: Hormone change!!  Perimenopause!!  F.T.S. Come to find out, quite a few other women at this same stage have had the same thing happen.  Are you KIDDING ME!?  Why didn't anyone warn us?

Anyhoo, back to my eye, which at this point, the lower half is nothing but blood. It was lovely, and I had enjoyed scaring the crap out of colleagues and students for the last 3 days. She was concerned about eye damage and sent me to an ophthalmologist. The end part of that story is there was no optic nerve damage and I might have glaucoma.  But that wasn't the most interesting part of that visit with the MALE ophthalmologist.

Nooooo.  The fun part of that 10-minute encounter with him is his repeated insistence that I do NOT have high blood pressure, that my anxiety was causing all my high readings, and I had obviously scratched my eye in my sleep because that's what happens 90% of the time, and I have no idea, no insight, no possible knowledge about my own body or my own health experiences.


via GIPHY

OK. 

So I started my BP meds because I trust my *new* general doctor more than I trust anyone else right now.  And guess the eff what?  My blood pressure is back down to my normal.  But more importantly, for the first time in MONTHS, I feel like myself. I don't have a constant headache. I'm not nauseated all the time. I'm sleeping.  I'm eating. I'm happy. 

I'm sure it could be many other things.  Correlation does not imply causation. I could be wrong.  Perhaps this was all stress related and I'm an idiot with no insight into my emotional states and general functioning and all the other women I know who've had this same weird incident during perimenopause are all idiots, too.

Nonetheless. We will wait and see.  I'm on a very low dose of this med b/c I'm usually so low with BP anyway. I do think that occasionally I'm going a bit too low, but I think that is not althogether unusual for me, too. I can try exercising more (I'm only running 3 miles at a pop instead of 4; maybe that's it? That 4th mile really cuts down my BP?).  I can lose more weight (although I'm down to my pre-twins weight which is normal for my height). I can try meditating twice a day instead of once. 

Or let's let Minnie Driver express my thoughts at being told (by male doctors) every time I turn around that it's anxiety and stress. 

So yeah!  Getting old is SO MUCH FUN, y'all!!  I'm sure you can't wait either.

I'm actually just glad it looks like this week I'll be able to stick around a bit longer. 

A Little Sensitivity from Our Superintendent Would be Nice

I sent this in as an OpEd to our local paper.  It wasn't picked up.  And I can understand why.  It was really time delimited (the week after the shooting at UNC Charlotte) instead of a more timeless, community-wide issue (a discussion about the need for and outcomes of lockdown drills, gun control, etc).

Nonetheless, I still feel this was important.  Did we really need a lockdown drill for an elementary school less than one week after a mass shooting?  Could it not have been postponed one week?COULD THE SUPERINTENDENT NOT HAVE SENT SOME SORT OF COMMUNICATION TO THE PARENTS THAT THE LOCKDOWN DRILLS WERE CONTINUING AS PLANNED BUT PRECAUTIONS WERE BEING TAKEN TO HELP TRAUMATIZED STUDENTS? Maybe, I don't know, he could have made sure there actually WERE extra precautions for the children of UNC Charlotte faculty, staff, and students who attended the multiple schools in which the lockdowns occurred. Or maybe extra precautions for the actual UNC Charlotte faculty, staff, and students who work in our school district. Could the Superintendent have actually responded to parents' messages to him about this event? Or did it take several attempts by one parent (not me) in which the last message shamed him for this man to actually respond?

My impressions of our school superintendent remain: He is more concerned with checking a box than the emotional and physical well-being of our children.

My submitted Op-Ed
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Suggested Headline: Lockdown Drills are necessary, but timing is a problem

On Monday, May 6, less than one week after the UNC Charlotte mass shooting, at least one school in the Charlotte Mecklenburg School system encouraged students to wear green to show their support of the university and their recent traumatic event. Children of UNC Charlotte faculty, staff, and students proudly donned their favorite Niner Green clothing to let others know their connection to and support of the university.

Two hours into the school day at THE SCHOOL MY CHILDREN ATTEND, a lockdown drill started. In at least one classroom, there no place to hide so students put their book bags in front of their small bodies. My young daughter’s body shook so hard she had to stabilize herself on the floor. She was convinced that their school was being targeted by a shooter because of their UNC Charlotte clothing. Her twin brother said it was the scariest drill he had ever been in and kept whispering “Is this real?” Less than a week before, he had been inconsolable and afraid that I, his mother, would be shot when she went back to her campus.

As an Organizational Psychologist, I fully appreciate the importance of training. I know that the UNC Charlotte police force’s repeated training for a terrorist event made their responses automatic, focused, and, ultimately, successful. Employees in professions that save and protect lives such as police, fire, medicine, and pilots need frequent and repeated training so that when an event happens their training and their adrenaline automate their responses to the right action for the right time.

But did we really need a lockdown drill at a K-8 elementary and middle school this Monday?

I understand that lockdown drills at schools are a necessary evil that our children have to endure. I understand that it gives the administrators, teachers, and children practice on what to do if the unthinkable occurs. I imagine it helps the administrators find faults in their response systems and think of ways to correct them. I do not think it does much to help the children.

Each school needs at least two lockdown drills a year to be in compliance. Was this drill already scheduled weeks or months in advance? A prudent leader would check to see if he or she could rearrange the schedule, perhaps exchanging the location of Monday’s drill site for one in another school system or delaying the ones scheduled this week for a few weeks.

What about top of mind safety? We, in Charlotte, are all currently sensitive to the safety of our location. So, maybe it would be a good idea to have a lockdown drill to reassure everyone that the authorities have it under control. By that logic, it would have been a great idea to have had a lockdown drill the day the Parkland High School students returned to school (see below). Or maybe that would have been insensitive. What about a lockdown drill at another high school in the same district as Parkland. A leader sensitive to the emotional health of his or her students would realize what a bad idea this is.

But what happens if the drill is delayed and there is a shooting at the school the skipped their drill? If, by delaying a drill a few weeks, a leader suspects a shooting is imminent, I think a call to the Charlotte Mecklenburg Police chief is a more strategic leadership solution than making sure the school has another lockdown.

I am flummoxed at the Superintendent of Charlotte Mecklenburg Schools. What sort of leader would not think critically about the necessity of a lockdown drill less than one week after an actual mass shooting in our city? Is he not aware of the close ties between UNC Charlotte and the children who attend CMS schools?  What sort of leader would not come up with a way to have the drill at a less emotionally fraught time or communicate about it with his constituents? I am concerned that his obvious lack of involvement and critical thinking about this lockdown drill carries over to other important decisions for our public school system.

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Parkland High currently has extremely stressful monthy lockdown drills.