Last winter it was not uncommon for me to go to bed wearing two flannel nightgowns. I would hunker down under our thickest comforter, pressed up against Mr. Zuska for warmth. Mr. Zuska, like many men, is an astonishing heat source, for which I have been grateful on many a chilly night.

This winter, things are different. I wear a short-sleeved t-shirt and a pair of cotton shorts to bed. We haven’t broken out the heavy comforter. Sometimes I can’t tolerate being too close to Mr. Zuska’s blast furnace body.

What changed? It’s menopause!

The mid-forties seem a little young to me for menopause but apparently it’s not unheard of, and here I am in the middle of it. The hot flashes started in July, and I was truly miserable in the summer. From one minute to the next, it would feel as if someone had suddenly turned the heat up fifteen degrees (that’s Fahrenheit, and yes, rest of the world, we here in the U.S. are still stubbornly clinging to our Fahrenheit scale and feet and pounds and all the rest of it.) This would last anywhere from two to five minutes, then gradually subside. In the beginning this happened every half hour. It’s much less frequent now.

It’s a strange sensation, not exactly like just being yourself outside on a hot day. It’s more like the hot day has gotten inside your body and you just want to crawl out of your skin to get away from it. You know the heat is going to stop in a few moments, but for those few moments you feel you absolutely cannot tolerate it.

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