My Body Electric

(March 31, 2019)

I was 35 when I began writing this blog. I am 48, soon to be 49, now.

At 35, my body underwent what I can only assume to be some bizarro hormonal change. My deodorant stopped working and I moved into the "perpetual hot" phase of my life.  I've mentioned before that I have the windows wide open year round in my room.

At work, in lecture, I start to fan myself as I meander, gesticulating wildly.  I climb up on counters to open the windows that should never be open but god damn it, I am a woman of a certain age and woe betide the human male who tells me to close the window.

I had always imagined myself sailing gracefully through the end of my fertility, having started this when I was 12. I would do it all natural!

Um, fuck no.

Last summer, I'd finally had enough of the bullshit. I was having two periods a MONTH. Two full fucking periods a month. What was this fuckery? I was supposed to be slowing DOWN, not ramping up.  I would wake up drenched, despite my frigid room.  My boobs hurt. Like puberty hurt and all the time because I was constantly having periods. I also was having month long cramping. Like the first day of your period, but all month long.  The amount of ibuprofen and naproxen I was taking was, frankly, terrifying.  I could clear out a 180 liqui-gels out every month.

I finally went to my doctor and said "I am over this shit". Now, remember, in 2005 I'd vowed to be hormone/birth control free mainly because we suspected it had contributed to my depressions.  Now in 2019, I was all "give me the pills". What the fuck did I know then? Nothing.

They helped. Oh, and CDB oil helped too. Non-THC version, but completely controls the cramps with only minor ( like three) ibuprofen help.

I am still peri-menopausal so there is more to come, but it is more bearable. Ladies, for those of you not at this stage of life? Think back  to the emotional and physical tumult of puberty. It's like that, but you have a fully adult brain and still can't stop the emotion flowing out of you. It's a treat.

I also had a bipolar episode from August to late November. Wheeeeee! That's really fucking inconvenient. Once I'd acknowledged that something was wrong and gotten myself to a new psychiatrist, we started a new medication that slowly brought me to center. I still have little flares, but I recover from them much faster.

Of course, when you are in a bipolar episode your attention to your blood sugars is shit. So there is that. I am slowly trying to bring all of this together. In January I told my GP "Yeah, I know I've gained weight and my Blood sugars are kind of shit, but I just can't manage everything right now."

Then there was the endless snow from January until mid March.  We had snow drifts up to my tits.  Not cool.

The amount of pills I take morning and night have become a running joke in our house. I have a GIANT pill organizer to keep track of the various medications that keep me from becoming a diabetic hormonal monster.

Can you believe this behemoth?

Terrance, this morning, was moaning about aches in his fingers. He held his hands out for me to inspect. I said, "That's what happens when you think that you are invincible in your 20's!" 

I may have added in a "motherfucker" because he has a wife who swears like Samuel Jackson.

One strange and unexpected side effect of being with the same partner for 28 years is that you get to watch your own body, and that of your partner change.  I don't need to be a 25 year old woman. I like this aging body I inhabit. I am rounder. I gain weight, I lose weight.  The male gaze slides over me, which is delightful. 

I am coming to terms with this body. My body electric.

Update: October 2025

I finally made it through! Menopause! Woot! A year ago, after not sleeping (Danger! Danger!) and forgetting so many things and the occasional horrid period, I went to an OB/GYN who specialized in Menopause.  Did I mention the sweating? Not just hot flashes but all night sweating? Good god. Waking up drenched does not improve ones outlook on the day.  I was not above begging the aforementioned OB. DO SOMETHING!

While estrogen was no recommended due to the heart thing, I could have progesterone. It helped. I do  not think I am so special as to have no effects of menopause but I just didn't need so...many. The memory thing was what was maddening. I have always had an incredible memory so to forget what I was doing seconds after I stood up was a unique torture. 

The progesterone helped. Not a 100% fix but a little better.  At this point I take what I can get.

Annoying Child (Gimlet Eye August 2007)

This was what Terrance began to sing to Emily this evening, in response to one of her bazillion questions.

School starts on Thursday and it, frankly, can't get here soon enough. I mean the mood swings, the weeping, the snappishness....and then there is Emily's behavior.

Hah!

Upon describing my daughters overall persona to my mother this weekend, she shared that the two weeks before school started again was the time of year she seriously considered running away.

I completely know how she feels. It was a relief to go to work today simply to disentangle myself from my daughter.

For instance, a little vignette from my weekend....

I needed to rest on Friday. I had been awake for-evah and needed to just close my eyes. I announced that I was taking an hour to do this. Under no uncertain terms I declared this to be an hour Free of Child. Eye contact was made. Clarity of intent was communicated.

For good measure, I went to Emily's room and placed myself upon her bed. I closed my eyes. I breathed deeply. I know that she has no intention of coming into her OWN room. Oh no. She wants to be in MY room. I listen to the birds. I relax.

With a sixth sense which is uncanny, Emily senses the change in my brain waves.  She creeps into the room. I am not quite asleep and can hear her approach. She assess the situation. I can feel her making a decision. Her hand shoots out and rubs my leg.

I don't move.

She rubs a little harder.

I don't move.

She pauses and stares at me. She is watching me breathe.

She makes her decision.

Unzipping her ViewMaster slide case ( but muffled - so I won't hear it), she removes the slides and begins to line them up the side of my body starting at my feet. One by one - edge to edge, she lines up the round disks on my body. She gets to my chest and shoves a couple into my yoga top, then covers my arm.

She steps back and assess her handiwork. She is pleased.

I consider leaping up and scaring the crap out of her. That would be funny. But I don't.

Instead I say from under my pillow:

"What exactly are you doing to my body?"

She starts to laugh. She is totally busted. She tries to pretend she is not in the bedroom TRYING to wake me up.

After several attempts at some lame story, she finally confesses. It was too quiet. She wanted me awake.

Yes. The realm of "annoying child" has been reached.

August 27, 2007 Gimlet Eye

Healthy

 For the first full year in recent memory I have been healthy the whole year.  

FAFO

This is on the corner of my computer.  In fact I have stickers all over my computer, which doesn't seem to be the culture of the State of Vermont...but meh. I am supremely unbothered. Until the Commissioner strolls up and directs me to start peeling them all off they stay. My Deputy Commissioner sees me a billion times a day and she is also unbothered. Emily tells me it is an "academic" thing. 

These five words ground me during meetings where I am annoyed, but trying to seem neutral. Meetings in which something that I want is being denied by the people I (State of Vermont) am paying. Quick note - If I (or any funder) is paying you two million dollars to exist and we want to implement something that is within the scope of your agreement telling me no is a surefire way to fuck around and find out.  I told a colleague that they ignore me "at their peril".

The position that I hold gives me an interesting space in which to move policy and practice. Many of these things are slow - gentle and persistent pressure applied systemically. Early Childhood people are patient and persistent by nature. Seriously, you wrangle a group of sixteen 4-year-olds for a day, or 8 infants.  Patient and Persistent. 

I thought my career pinnacle was being a tenured professor. While I absolutely loved my students and the process of teaching them to become kind and caring teachers who knew that the child is always at the center of the curriculum, the cost of that job outweighed that joy.  The energy that I had to expend was too much for me. My desire to take care of and support my students was at a steep cost to myself.  Dying in front of them for three years in a row gave them collective PTSD with every cough or every time I needed to be out.  Not a good fucking model of work life balance.

There is life after academia. A much happier life it turns out. One with actual boundaries and a real work life balance. A life in which I can effect a lot of change for child care in a small state that I love and in which I feel "normal". Wisconsin always left me feeling like I was an odd and brightly coloured bird that was misunderstood. I was too blunt, too direct, too Dawn. Too fuck around and find out.

I am back in a place where Dawn-ness is understood - maybe not all the time - but it is also not looked at askew. In Wisconsin I was told by an Associate Dean that I didn't realize how I came across and I stared in amazement. Bitch, I have lived with me for 50+ years. Do you think I have not had intimate knowledge about how I come across?

Then I quit my job.

Fuck Around and Find Out.

Flood

 I am truly trying to write here more.

My brain is wholly quieter now that the constant-ness of a child at home, and a job that was killing me has subsided. 

It's nice. 

I drive to work two days a week and it gives me time to sing to my favorite Sirius stations, or Spotify playlists all while thinking through my day ahead or day behind. I still marvel at the beauty of my home state with early morning mist coming off the intense green of late June.  I marvel at the deep blue of the afternoon sky reflecting onto the trees as I drive by now-quiet streams on small back roads. 

We all watch those streams now. The PTSD of last years flooding remains close to our skin.  I find myself holding a bit of breath when rain is forecast for multiple days. There are no guarantees that your town or city or house will not suffer next.

I was re-reading some of my older writing here and find myself marveling at that person who wrote so well, so witty.  She was fucking brilliant and hysterical. Since this blog started in 2006 it can feel like looking back into distant memories that snap back into crystal clear focus with re-reading.  It brings me back to having a seven year old and feeling the exhaustion of mothering both both ways - into her past and into her future.  As I write today, I can feel that exhaustion but it is far away and fuzzy. I am not sad about that. I have said before and will continue to say that Motherhood was terrible for my mental health. It nearly broke me and despite my fierce I-will-cut-a-bitch-while-you catch-these-fucking-hands protectiveness - it cost me.

My body continues its slowest fucking meander into Menopause ever. 54, ya'll. I am 54 and my body is not particularly ready to give up the fertility ghost. I am at the doorstep waiting to hand it over but the UPS driver never arrives. I got my first period when I was 12. I think I've donated to the cause long enough.  That being said, the symptoms of menopause do not wait at the door. 

While I can abide a lot of symptoms, it's the not sleeping through the night that gets me.  No  sleep = Dawn can easily spiral into a manic episode! I take two sleeping meds, with Ambien on stand by if I have haven't slept in 4 days. 

(As an aside, the lectures I have gotten about my Ativan and Ambien by doctors who are not my psychiatrist. YES, I know they can be addictive. No, I am not abusing them. I got lots of issues but substance abuse isn't one. Well, maybe the ibuprofen liquigels but that is in the past)

*********************************************************************************

If you've read to here you will think "Did she say June up there in the third paragraph"

Yep. Sorry. Who knows how I got distracted or by what - one of those eternal mysteries that I just live with it seems. Perimenopause has fucked with my memory in ways that I find intolerable. I would find myself forgetting words in lectures that I had given for 11 years. I stand up and walk away from something and immediately forget what I was going to get and why. Mostly it just pisses me off.  I hear that it is not uncommon.

Vermont did flood again in July on the anniversary of the 2023 flood. This followed with a flood two weeks later and then more damage a week or so later. Every time rain is forecast we all, collectively, hold our breath to see if it is just a little or it is going to turn into some destructive force. If you don't believe in climate change come to Vermont. We can show you the effects all across our state. Emily can take you on her field visits assessing damage to historic infrastructure that has simply disappeared. We can't even rebuild yet because the ground is so saturated that it simply collapses inward. Rebuilding a culvert or road to only watch it disappear with the next heavy rain is worse than the initial damage.

Let us not even discuss the amount of farmland being swept away and the yearly loss of crops in the middle of the growing season.  One farmer I know has lost ten acres between the July 2023 and July 2024 floods. 

I didn't intend to make the end of this some kind of climate change flood rant but Vermonters, while hella strong, are tired. The FEMA relief has not yet come through from 2023. The houses they said they would buy out have not been bought out and continue to flood. People have nowhere else to live because there is no housing here (insert my feelings about hedge funds buying the real estate and air bnb profiteers)- so they live in flood damaged homes or apartments with mold and the knowledge that the next flood will also come for them again.

Terrance, Emily and I are fine. We are privileged and fortunate. The inconvenience of not finding a house or land ( that is not on a newly designated flood zone) on which to build is a small discomfort compared to fellow Vermonters.

Spare them a thought.

Take to the Sea

 This time of year finds me contented. The beginning of summer with it's softness and greenness stirs something inside me that holds forth a type of promise that things will be good.

Our family tradition has become meeting in Maine for three weeks and living in the beach house at Moody Beach. My sister comes from Florida, my nephew comes from Detroit, my mother in law from Arizona. My brother and his family come from outside of Boston. It has become, for me, a time outside of time.  

The ocean rolls in and out and I look at it all day perpetually fascinated by the immensity of the sea. It is hard, when confronted by an ancient force, to focus on small problems.  I love the ocean and not in a charming way. It is terrifying and beautiful. There are nights when the tide is so high and so strong that it hits the sea wall and moves the boulders.  All of this reminds you that you, human, are so small and inconsequential that your anxieties are misplaced. 

I walk the beach after those tides and see fish, lobsters and crabs torn apart by the force of the waves. I wade up to my knees, even though the water is ice cold. I walk out on the rocks to the tide pools. I haunt the edge of the tide. I am uniquely at ease.

Homeward Bound

 i may decide to write here more. Hard to say. 

Updates: 

#1 I am alive. Heart continues to heal and recover and do it's god damned job. One flare up of pericarditis...but I knew right away because I can feel the rub under my breastbone. May none of you EVER become so familiar with the feeling of pericarditis that you shoot off an email to your cardiologist to say "HEY! I am pretty sure my pericarditis has returned"

and then find yourself in a 7 am echocardiogram. It had returned and it was treated and I am Ok now, although Terrance has never stopped being the Heart failure police.

Mayo Clinic, it seems, does not fuck around. 

#2. I quit my job. Yep. Up and walked away from a tenured position. Why? because it was literally killing me. How many organs need to fail before you get the bag of dog shit on fire message left on your front door?

#3. As part of quitting said job, we moved back to Vermont. In January. I wouldn't recommend it. I also had to medicate an infamously skittish cat and then haul him cross country in three separate flights. I should have medicated myself too. If the gabapentin wasn't tuna flavored I might have thrown some down my throat.

#4 Housing in Vermont is really, really, really hard to find. The January part didn't help.  We had a massive three bedroom, 2.5 bath, with two car garage in Wisconsin. Backyard...the whole works. Vermont? About the size of what we lived in during our first years. TINY. We pay triple for this Vermont place.  TRIPLE!!

C'est la vie. We look for houses, or builders, or both.

#5 I have inexplicably become a woman who gets her nails done. As in I have standing appointments.  These are my real nails and they look amazing.  Who knew that at 53 I would suddenly morph into a lady with nice nails

#6 I have also become a woman who can't seem to finish things. Last episodes of shows, rugs...just things. It makes me too sad. Honestly. Terrance tried to get me to watch the end of Reservation Dogs with him and I flat out refused. Left the room. Began to cry when he came back into my bedroom because I couldn't bear to think that their lives became sad, or that one of the girls disappeared , or they died...

I think it is the weight of adulthood. 

#7 Hang on to your hair stylist. Tip them extravagantly. When you move and lose them it will take you 10 months to finally find someone who doesn't fuck up your colour.

#8 Find a job you like and that pays you what you are worth. Its nice. I also don't have to have an IV of Ativan to get through every meeting with a dean.

#9 Today, I finally got a consult with a psychiatrist. Yep, its taken almost 10 months.  She commented that Mayo sent an crazy number of pages in a medical file. I actually laughed. "I'm sure they did", I said. In whatever I must have filled out in May I wrote comments about the standard. questions. 

She reads "You wrote here that your childhood was .....stressful."

When I tell you that I guffawed. It was unseemly.  My response "That is the understatement of the century"

Otherwise I like her.

#10 Terrance and I celebrated our 27th wedding anniversary on October 5th. You don't - you can't - realize what it means when you marry.  I think if we did no one would do it. Standing there at my wise age of 26 and being so sure - so, so sure - that you know everything and that you will do it all right, and better and more perfect. 

But you don't. You can't. The best outcome you can hope for is that you like the people you become. Individually and together. There were easily 7 years in which I really, really did not like my husband. I don't say that to crow about how we made it through and look at us! No. It was hard and awful and I despaired. Our daughter got to watch that and it makes me endlessly sad that she had to witness that between two adults who love her.

Our marriage is peaceful. He brings me bouquets of flowers every Thursday because he knows it makes me happy.  We both work from home  - him full time and me three days a week. We just keep company. 

I think it is the best thing you can have.

P.S. Emily has a Master's degree. Historic Preservation, University of Vermont Dec 2022.  

Kintsugi

 The first few days home were terrifying. There is a PTSD that marches alongside BIG health issues and everyone in my family now has a healthy dose. 

I mean even tonight I was laying on my belly watching tv when Terrance ran in and said "Are you Ok? Is everything all right?" I looked up at him and said, "Yeah, I'm fine, why?"  "Because when I see you laying like that its usually because you don't feel good"

Poor man.  Now, in his defense, Dawn standing and flopped forward onto her belly was my preferred stance during heart failure. Apparently it takes pressure off the heart and is an actual documented "thing" about heart failure. All I knew was that I could breathe better so it became my default position. I got so accustomed to it that I continue to do it. It's comfy.  Not so much for him.

Despite my "no big deal" about being in the hospital....home was scary. Do you know those "in sickness and health" words that are in many wedding vows? Um, yeah. I was cashing in on those words HARD. 

In the hospital, Terrance had to bathe me. I would stand up and he would take these warmed cloths and wash me. Have you, an adult human, had another adult human wash you?  That, more than anything else, encapsulated how weak I was. I needed him. I needed his help.  At home, I couldn't make my own food, or walk up and down stairs. Shit, walking the 10 steps to the bathroom in my bedroom was a lot.  I would slowly walk to the bathroom, then slowly walk back. Rest, then try to climb back up into bed. 

Terrance would run my baths, wash my hair, get me lotion and then into a clean nightgown. He got a crash course in low sodium cooking because I was banned from the salt train.  (Sob, I still miss salt sometimes)  He monitored my fluids because I was only allowed 64 ounces a day to keep the fluid from building up. And he listened to my breathing because I still sounded like shit, gurgling away like a bubbler, then going quiet so he thought I had died. The man slept in a chair staring at me for weeks.  No wonder he has PTSD. 

Oh, and pills? I got the pills. Lots and lots of pills. The record high was 22 pills a day.  Blood pressure, heart rate stabilizers, pericarditis meds, diuretics - and then the depression/bipolar meds, diabetes, my regular statin.... Open up, swallow them down. 

They had warned me that finding the right medication titration would be ...rough.  Given that I believe that nothing will really affect me - I was dubious.  First med down? Losartan. I got the cough. You don't want a cough after heart failure because, well, a cough is a sign of heart failure. Tried another med. Not good. Tried a third, meh, Ok. 

This went on with medication after medication. We would find my therapeutic dose and then move to the next med to titrate me up.  The thing that we don't talk about is that with these medications with my condition the only way we know we are at your therapeutic dose?  You get sick. Your symptoms return.  The day we figured out that the Bisoprolol was too much? I walked into cardio rehab looking like death.  The med after that? I was puking in my office after the increase. 

Oh, did I mention the remote monitoring nurses? I had to weigh myself, take my blood pressure and pulse ox every day with a tablet that sent those vitals to the team. Once a week I would talk to the nurse as she reviewed those vitals and assessed any warning signs. Then, of course, there was my cardiac rehab team. I exercised under their watchful (and encouraging) eyes until the end of April. They also kept an eye on my weight, and I wore a heart monitor so they could watch to make sure I wasn't overdoing it. 

Cardiac rehab was nice, actually. I could see that I was getting stronger. I could see that I could be on the treadmill longer, or on the fancy bike with the scenic beaches and get to the end of that walk/bike. I was able to add weights by February and I was able to increase those numbers.  It was me, and several older men. They were crusty, refusing to change their diets, eat vegetables or exercise at home.  Of course, some had been through cardiac rehab before and didn't really see the rationale for adding vegetables into their diets.  

Not me. Tell me to exercise at home? Ok. Eat more veggies and fruit? Absolutely. The cardiac rehab staff are innately upbeat and kind. The other thing they do is transmit their observations to your doctors in real time. If I said "Oh, I was coughing a lot last night"....my doctors knew.  They watched me for lightheadedness and if my blood pressure was too low.  The cough from the Losartan not resolving? - the cardiac rehab staff emailed my doctor.  The first time I had that reaction to me medication?  My doctor knew right away.  I was ensconced in a team that was really dedicated to getting me back to a "normal" life. 

Broken Hearted

 The reality of what has happened still catches me off guard. My habit of minimizing my trauma, my health, my life  is being broken...slowly.  Even then there are times when the enormity of what my body has been through in nine months can pull me up short. 

When my cardiologist took my hands in March and said "You've been through a lot Dawn. This is a really big deal and you are doing everything you need to - but this was a big deal". 

I burst into tears.  Of course, I was also having symptoms of heart failure again and was terrified that my heart was saying "fuck it" and counting down. 

When I got the bed in the hospital I was there for six days? seven days? It was a long time.  I had lots of blood taken, and lots of things pushed into my IV. The ward I was in was next to the ICU - so there was a lot of monitoring.  I am an easy patient. Compliant. I stretch out arms for blood pressure and blood draws. I helpfully point out where you are most likely to get a vein. I coach folks through the fact that my veins seem to push down and disappear when you are looking for them.  (as an aside, I never thought I'd be SO familiar with my veins and how to access them). I take the meds, all the meds. 

Mostly I sat in the quiet and just waited. Terrance would arrive and sit with me for hours, then go out and make it back for a couple more hours before visiting hours were over.  I listened to things and watched out the window. Mainly though, I just lay there.  

I was so tired. Tired from the illness but tired from everything. Like every educator during Covid, I was fucking exhausted. My students were falling apart and I was trying to patch them together and teach AND do all the other pointless bullshit that comes with the professor gig.  I was keeping an admin at arms length as they failed to listen AND piled on more bullshit. I was trying to be the program director for our major and protect the faculty from some of those ridiculous asks from admin.   

Where did I find myself? Laying in a hospital bed. Again. Third year in a row! Increasing severity with every visit!  Terrance did not mince words. "This job is killing you. We have to do something about this."

I didn't have the strength to argue, and what was there to argue about? It was true. The evidence was *literally*  laying here in a hospital bed.  He began to handle HR and the FMLA debacle mainly because I was just so sick and couldn't bear to deal with the University bullshit.

On a Monday, after my echocardiogram, I woke  from a little nap to see my nurse standing over me.  She was waiting for me to wake up.  She had a diagram in her hand.

Now, nurses are the ultimate poker faces. They do not ruffle, they do not have big reactions. While this nurse was not overtly panicking, she absolutely had an air of purpose.  In truth I was not surprised to see her. My nosy ass watched the echo intently and even my amateur eyes could see that it wasn't good.  The tech can't tell you anything and mine was excellent but I mean you'd have to be blind to see that my heart was just not really pumping blood. Anywhere.  The colors that indicate direction of the blood were just kind of hanging around. My heart looked weak. Tired. 

In that, we were both aligned. 

My nurse had a diagram in a booklet and I rolled over to give her my attention. It seemed that my heart was really, really not pumping.  Not the right ventricle, and the left ventricle was particularly stubbornly refusing to participate.  My ejection fraction was so low that she suspected I might get taken into surgery right now to have a defibrillator installed.  Like Right now. 

I did not have a surgery. Surgery is always decided on in terms of cost/benefit and there was a good chance that with time and medication and diet and exercise we could avoid a surgery. However, and this is the fucking annoying thing, it would take time. A lot of time.  I was young. There was no discernible reason that my heart should have decided to take a vacation.  Maybe it would correct itself.

My low ejection fractions seem to have set off a bit of a kerfuffle in my cardiology team ( yeah, I now have a team) about whether to release me or watch me for a few more days. They compromised and kept me an extra day and then released me. 

I'd been warned about post hospital recovery and I was sure I would be fine. I mean, come on. How hard can it be? No surgery or anything - just pills and diet changes. I had been released.