Month: June 2026

Foe is Me

Standard

Not getting any better. Not even remotely. HRT would help enormously, but I can’t have it – they won’t do the op if you’re taking it. I have no choice but to suck it up and get on with it until my organs are sucked out of me. Which is likely to be September, I’m told.

But get on with what, exactly? I don’t want to do anything. I can’t do much at all, really. In this heat, I am all but absofuckinlutely, well and truly, utterly fuckin’ buggered. My knees and my hips keep seizing, my collection of gooey gynaecological objects has gone cuckoopants, and I am so high on painkillers that a flock of seagulls has just flown past me. And yes, I did have that hairdo in the eighties. (More like a hairdon’t, but I digress.)

Despite the one-foot-in-the-grave*-ness of it all, there is a thing, and the thing is this: I might be signed off sick but I still have to parent. I am still a carer. I still have to do the mom-stuff and the daughter-stuff when I can’t do the day job. Which means I still have to get the shopping in (which all but kills me), feed people, deal with my elderly mum’s care needs, and do all the Mom-as-PA nonsense with the kids’ schools.

(*I wonder what the cremation version is. One speck of ash in the urn?)

My brain (cell) is all NOPE, probably because it’s in tune with my equally nopey body. And as meltdown malarkeys would have it, I have little aptitude for thought. What little thinking I am doing includes but is not limited to the likes of:

“Is it completely inadvisable to operate on oneself? I have a delightful kitchen knife…”

Alright, so I am my own worst enemy. I’ve never been a fan of myself (or my stupid body), and lately, the self-loathing has reached a new low. But I do have moments of clarity. Moments where I try to have a word with myself, and stay positive. So, with that in mind, I thought it might be just spiffing to shelve berating myself for a while. Stop beating myself up for not being able to work/take the kids out/do normal human things. I can’t bake; hell, I can’t even do the wordthang (there’s a novel that isn’t going to write itself, a poetry collection to compile, and my collection of Liverpool horror stories needs an edit). That’s how I know I’m ill. I’ve lost the will to write, to pun, to rhyme (Is that one collective will or three discrete wills? I ask my annoying self…).

So, I started a sentence with ‘So’. Then, in the interests of staying just PEACHY POSITIVE, I wrote a list of things I am able to do at the moment:

  1. Write lists
  2. Mope
  3. Complain
  4. Whine
  5. Shout at clouds.

That’s it. I’m officially ancient. I don’t need to yell, “Where’s me cane?” because I already have one. I use it to point at things.

Meno-pause? Meno-just-STOPPIT-already!

Standard

We’re now halfway through the year (almost) and I’m six months worse.

(For the previous whine-fest, go here):Ablation, Asherman Syndrome, and Me – Libera te Tutemet

I’d been coping alright at work, what with having a very understanding boss who makes sure I have reasonable adjustments in place: extra bathroom breaks, a rise-and-fall desk, yada yada… then This Weekend happened.

We were in town with a couple of the crotchgoblins when I had to bend down to de-stone my shoe. This was the precise moment I realised One Can Not Bend That Way Anymore. What. The. Bazoolah? I had to lean on my lovely hubby and ended up doing this weird, awkward thing where I tried to bring my foot up instead of taking my body down… you had to be there, I guess, but trust me, it was a comical sight. Except I wasn’t laughing. Quite the opposite: floods.

I spent the next half-hour hobbling back to the car and whining about being knackered and wondering When Did I Get So Old?

Allegedly, it gets better after DA OP. The hip pain, all the pelvic nonsense and the inability to fold oneself in half, they’re (supposedly) due to the hormonal shitshow I’m experiencing right now.

Symptoms of menopause and perimenopause – NHS

But that’s cool, right? I’m perfectly normal. RIGHT?

I had no sleep last night. Zero. One of the symptoms, par for the course. But with me, it’s a whole different story. I have to have ALL the symptoms at once, because of course I do.

My brain was no friend to me: It made sure I ran the whole gamut of gamuts. Worrying, restless legs, anxiety, overthinking, even guilt—I knew, as I was lying there awake at 4am, that I’d be calling in sick at 8, but there’s always that moment, that sliver of self-doubt: Am I poorly enough to be off work? Will they believe me? What if they think I’m swingin’ the lead?

And then there’s that other moment. The one where you whack yourself over the noggin with a good ol’ reality check. It goes like this:

Who exactly are you trying to kid? Look at you. You’ve just rubbed freeze gel on your thighs and Ibuprofen on your knees. You have had no sleep to speak of, you’ve been to the loo seventeen times in the last six hours, (that’s seventeen journeys up the stairs, each of which took an inordinate amount of time because LOOK AT THE FRICKIN’ STATE OF YOU), and you’ve had to cave in and reach for the drugs even though you KNOW they’ll set your stomach off, because otherwise you won’t be able to move. And you’re worrying about work? Get outa here.

So, I listened to myself, for once. I called in sick, and will have to face the consequences—being off is barely even a choice when I’m like this. Why? Well, for one, I can’t word. I can type just fine, but when I am in this much pain, speech goes out the mucky window. I find it hard to string sentences together, and can even sound leathered. Imagine me on the blower to a customer: “Yesh, Mr. Schmith, I shall short it out for you thish week…” That’s if I had the chance to be on the phone at all, what with having to all but camp out in the bathroom.

So why the blog? You know me. I love a good whine. That’s ‘whine’ with an aitch. None of that drinking bollox for me these days. Can’t tolerate it. Not for want of trying, like. Over the last few months, I have tried to drink. I’ve poured myself a glass every now and then, and it’s either given me acidmadness or intolerable stomach cramps. So, yeah: no.

If I am writing, no matter the subject, I am alive. I am here to tell my story. And who knows? Maybe it’ll resonate. Perhaps someone will read this and come to realise they’re not alone. You need to talk? Hit me up.

There’s a lovely lass in the office who’s been helping me with this stuff (thanks, JJ!) – so if I can be that person to someone else, I am all ears (and shoulders. Honestly, they are covered in middle-age flab so they’re infinitely comfortable). Speak and I shall listen. Come: rest your head, let me put my bingo wings around you.

One I made earlier: pics from a previous procedure