Follow up letter from the doctor in the menopause clinic
arrived today.
She describes me as a “nulliparous lady,” never heard that
said about me before.
Says I finished chemo in November 2010, wrong, once had
“severe menopausal symptoms,” wrong, and “continues to be troubled” by night
sweats, decreased memory, and irritability. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong.
I used to feel panic when I thought about the past, the fact
that there was now a great chunk of it behind me. I wanted to run back and
change things, do it better, differently
to produce better results. I don’t feel that horrible regret now. My days have
separated out like a child’s, each one enough and I don’t think much about past or future.
My only problem is money. Well a lot of people have that
worry and it’s not fatal. Everyone wants salmon on a herring diet. And I worry
about getting fatter. I noticed recently that my friend Pam who has always been
rather round, seems much slimmer. She insists she hasn’t lost a single ounce,
it’s just that all her friends have put on loads of weight. That is one answer
to the middle-aged spread issue.
