The little grey pill…

 If you knew nothing about me other than the combination of pills I take in the morning, how old would you think I am? 70?  80?  To be fair, most of them are pretty innocuous.   Most of the pills are to up my immune-system so that the colds and flu that I used to suffer from multiple times a year don’t happen.  Sure members of my family might shake their heads and think I’m way too crunchy-granola and believing way too much in health shoppe voodoo, but I have NOT been really sick in a LONG time.  (TOUCH WOOD)

The other pills?  Well let’s just take a little tour of my supplement trail mix, shall we??  Let’s start at the top left and go clock-wise: the big yellowy splotchy pill (that looks kinda like a buttured popcorn Jelly Belly) is a multi-vitamin, the gargantuan blackish one is the Omega-3 supplement (think cod liver oil that our parents used to take), the white one is calcium-magnesium (strong bones and all that), the little grey one at the bottom right is for soothing peri-menopause symtoms (more on this in a moment), the red is my special fancy-dancy iron supplement (that my doctor prescribed because apparently I’m anemic), the orangey one at the bottom left is…  oh sweet caduceus!  What the hell IS that pill?  Frickin’ memory loss….  AHA!!   The B stress complex (to aid in warding off colds/flus etc), and the larger grey is Vitex, an herb that helps regulate my period (which means that instead of every 2 weeks I have my period every 24 days).  I know – all you’re hearing is blah, blah, blah, red pill, blah, blah, orange pill, blah, blah, blah every 24 days. But trust me – I am not the only one who is glad that my periods are less frequent – David thinks it’s a really good thing.  REALLY A LOT.

Until last week I was doing okay with this cocktail.  Then I added the little grey pill – the innocent-looking one that is made of sage and was supposed to help me with my hot flashes one of the 35 attending joys of peri-menopause. (see below)  Since taking it – I have NOT slept through the night.  Apart from the one night when I took a sleeping pill because I’d had a really delicious 2 hour nap in the afternoon and thought – There is no way I’ll be able to sleep, I’m feeling too keyed up… By the clock-watching I’ve been perfecting this week I’m up pretty much ALL freaking night.  1:27 a.m.  1:36 a.m. 1:49 a.m. 1:52 a.m. … 2:09 a.m. 2:13 a.m.  2:21 a.m. …  I must get some sleep because I remember really weird-ass dreams.  And I think I might be hallucinating a bit.  Like the towel that hangs on the back of the bedroom door, looked like it might have been an old Italian woman reaching out a hand to curse me.  I also looked at David next to me in bed last night and I was CONVINCED that he was Rissa.  Which means I was probably just dreaming about Rissa and imagining she was there, but it took me a LONG time to realize that it was David.  I may have poked him a couple of times to get him to look at me.  “It’s okay sweetie – just checking.  Go back to sleep.”

So this is a list of 35 things associated with peri-menopause..  WTF??  Seriously?  Because why??  No REALLY.  WHY???    And what do men have?  Difficulty peeing and they might lose hair.  I just counted.  18.  I have 18 of these.  Well, it could be worse, I could have all 35.  I think I was just possessed by my mother for a second there.  That’s actually a good thing.  Mom says things like, “Turn that frown upside down” and means it.  She will always be the optimist.  I am determined to follow in her footsteps.  My glass wil be 1/2 full!!  Given all my weird-ass medical shit – it’s a freaking miracle that I don’t have ALL 35 of the symptoms!  PLUS, but wait there’s more, I have so much material that I can write about because of this ‘time of life.’  AND… I can fix this.  I think.  This morning, I didn’t take the little grey pill and tonight, I’m taking a sleeping pill to get a good night’s sleep and all will be well in the universe.  And if I’m still having No 5. Sleep Disturbances after NOT taking the sage – I will… deal with it… perhaps with near-hysteria, but I’ll deal with it.  Because really?  If you can’t laugh about this kind of shit…  you turn into one of those older women who looks like they never learned to smile.  And that? Ain’t me!