Mental Menopause Meltdown

The things we go through during menopause is not to be taken lightly.

For me, I guess it all started one evening as I was getting ready for bed. I laid down and my heart began pumping so hard that it was causing the bed to move. I figured there was something wrong as heart disease runs very high on both sides of my family and to top it off, I am a smoker. I’m not a heavy smoker, but I am a smoker. My heart wouldn’t let me sleep and as I laid there, this strong feeling came over me that I would not wake up the next morning. I didn’t have a fear of going to sleep. I just had a fear of not waking up and that made no sense to me at all. You would think if a person thought they were not going to wake up the next day, they would not go to sleep to begin with, but that didn’t seem to effect me at all. It was as though I was ready to go.

I went to sleep and slept good even though in the back of my mind, I continued thinking I would not wake up the next day. When the next day would roll around, I would be grateful I was alive. This went on for about three weeks.

After that kind of subsided, I began having zero tolerance for people on the road. Road rage set in and it was something I had never experienced before. The incidences on the road came one after another. One incident in particular was when I was at a stop light waiting to make a left turn. The guy behind me was honking his horn for me to go, only I couldn’t due to on coming traffic. I threw my arms up and told him that I wasn’t going anywhere. As I sat there, he drove around me and then in front of me making that left with on coming traffic. The other cars coming towards him had to slam on their brakes to avoid hitting him. At first, I thought it was me, but all these incidents that were happening were not my doing, it was all them.

It wasn’t until I was trying to merge onto the freeway one day, that I realized something was very wrong with me. I was trying to merge onto the freeway and there was a car that wouldn’t move over to the left lane to let me in. He stayed on that lane even though there was no other traffic. I squeezed my way in and the driver continued honking his horn and was really upset. I slammed on my brakes, the guy had to swerve around me to avoid hitting me. He was really mad and I kept on going. It wasn’t until that time that I realized I wasn’t only putting other people around me in danger but I was putting myself in danger as well. I then thought, this is not me. This is not right. What am I doing?

After that, things things grew more intense. Bad thoughts began running through my mind about killing people. I would sit around for hours at work just thinking about getting a knife, slicing someone’s neck, watching them bleed slowly and die. It was only certain people that I felt this about. It wasn’t about myself or my daughter. When these thoughts start growing more intense, I thought I had better go see a doctor and seek some help.

I hadn’t seen a doctor in three years, but found one and went in. I explained my situation to her and she told me she believe it was all related to menopause. Due to my family history of heart disease, there was no way she could put me on hormones which would have taken care of it. The only other option that I had, because I am a smoker, was anti-depression medication. I hesitated but agreed to it because I wanted to get rid of the thoughts in my mind. I couldn’t control them anymore and it was getting to that point and I explained all this to her. I told her I was glad I was telling her all that I had been thinking because I really wanted to tell someone. If I would have told anyone else, they would have thought I was crazy. I went on to tell her I was relieved that I had told her because now, if I were to go out and kill someone, at least she knew.

She prescribe anti-depression medication for me. It took me a couple of days to think about taking them. I have never taken medication in my life and I didn’t want to start now. I finally gave in to it because I figured I had nothing to lose. It was either going to work or it was not. So I started taking them three weeks ago.

The first two weeks, she had me on a very low dose of just one pill. She told me to double dose after two weeks but it was still going to be a low dose. She had me take lab work because she wanted to see if I was menopausal or going through menopause. She was relieved to find out that I was indeed going through menopause.

Apparently the part of the brain that tells my ovaries to release is confused because that part of my body refuses to do it. It’s the same part of the brain where these thoughts were coming from and the part of the brain that this medication helps with.

I am happy to announce the bad thoughts, along with everything else, are now gone.

My doctor says they call it “the change” for a reason and unfortunately our bodies are in a state of shock and confusion and don’t seem to understand what is going on.