Or: Is it hot in here, or is it just me?
via GIPHY
It was the third time we’d been through menopause, the two of us, and by now we were sick of it.
My first time, ten years ago, we’d been caught off guard. I woke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat. During the daytime, I complained angrily about the sudden changes in the house’s temperature. “Don’t we ever change the batteries in this thing?” I said, meaning the thermostat.
“It says sixty-eight,” said Deedie, my partner, with a voice that suggested, not unreasonably, that the problem was all in my head.
I was forty-five then, and I’d only been female for a couple years. I knew that transition for transsexual women meant an ongoing experiment in endocrinology, that the ingestion of serious quantities of Premarin and Spironolactone would have dramatic changes upon my body. I had, of course, looked forward to those changes hungrily, had desperately, passionately, longed for them for most of my life.
When people asked me what the combined effects of the estrogen and the testosterone suppressant were, I’d cleverly say, “The one pill make you want to eat salad and talk about relationships. The other pill makes you dislike the Three Stooges.”
It had also given me breasts and hips, softened my hair and skin. Which was, you know. Nice.
We’d weathered the transition together, Deedie and I. Then…
a href=”https://medium.com/@jennyboylan_97964/hot-flash-c74dc108b8ee#.x3u2bifcg”>(read the rest of the piece at Medium)
