Dazed, Confused, and Drenched in Sweat
The peri/menopause black hole
Last night I dreamt I was the lion king.
Not, as my sister assumed when I reported this dream, Simba. Or even Mufasa! But me, Sara. I WAS the lion king. Being the lion king entailed a live show in which I had to defeat Scar (for real - not for funsies, as “live show” might imply). I did this by flying (in the sky) and mostly, roaring my ass off.
My dream ended, as most of my dreams end these days, with me waking up drenched in a cold sweat.
I’m 42. And for the past several months, I’ve been dealing with the type of night sweats I’ve only ever experienced in the postpartum period. And I have no clue why.
On particularly sweaty nights, I wake up, ditch my drenched t-shirt, and feel the sweat slowly creep down my torso in enragingly slow-moving rivulets. I 100% found myself googling “night sweating more with no shirt” which is not only a very concise google term, but not a thing google has any clear answers for unless you count the random Reddit commenter who posited that you simply feel the sweat more acutely without the shirt there to soak it up. Cool!
I mention my lion king dream because there seems to be a wild correlation (pun absolutely intended) between the intensity and vividness of my dreams and the amount of sweat pouring from my body. It’s mysterious. Just like the sweat!
There are many reasons one might sweat during the night.
A room that’s too hot
Unbreathable bedding or pajamas
Increased stress
Thyroid issues
A fever
None of these reasons apply to me. Additionally, I’m not experiencing any of the following symptoms that Dr. Google tells me typically go hand in hand with night sweats and indicate perimenopause.
Decrease in energy
Weight gain
Fluctuating or irregular periods
Mood swings
Trouble concentrating
So it isn’t perimenopause, right? Surely I wouldn’t JUST have night sweats. Right? After a few annoying and perplexing months of continued night sweats, I called my doctor despite my allergy to phone calls and/or admin tasks. During our telehealth visit she seemed to think I was too young for perimenopause but hoped to have more clarity after some routine bloodwork.
The bloodwork came back. All the basics (insulin, thyroid, cortisol, liver and kidney function) were normal.
This morning, after my action-packed night spent summoning the animal kingdom to my aid in an epic fight to the death against hyenas that really have been unfairly maligned by Disney, my 5yo came into bed with me for a snuggle and earnestly asked, “Mama, did you pee in your bed?”
It has been months since my labs came back as “normal,” but my fucking nights are NOT normal. I don’t mind the technicolor dreams (roaring WHILE flying can’t be beat truly), but the sweat is disruptive. It wakes me up! Frequently. Who knew that slow drips of perspiration pooling under my boobs are not conducive to REM? After a night of t-shirt changing, pillow swapping, and position shifting, I tend to wake up (whether or not I was defending Pride Rock) feeling wooly-brained and sort of jet-lagged. It mostly wears off after I move my body a bit. And like, generally, I’m FINE, but I’d rather not be researching the type of mattress protector typically reserved for newly potty-trained toddlers. I’d also really love to just know why the fuck my sweat glands have turned into Molly-swilling (one can swill Molly, right?) college students at an all-night rave.
In her “your lab results are normal, be on your merry way” email, my PCP wrote, “If you continue to have symptoms, please reach out to the office to book an appointment for further evaluation.” Since I’m undoubtedly continuing to have symptoms (mama did you pee in your bed?), I told her as much. She recommended I reach out to a specialist, and here’s a fun bit o’ text on that specialist’s website.
Right. This “top-notch” care is completely out of pocket. This particular practice is also named something akin to Vitality by Vivian which is a red flag for me. I’m not particularly keen on PAYING OUT OF POCKET for medical care provided by someone who wants to use my vitality as an advertisement for her vitality conjuring skills.
Feeling at sea, and unwilling to shell out a bunch of cash for “a personalized diet and exercise plan,” I did what anyone socialized in a culture that doesn’t give a shit about women’s health does. I texted friends.
One told me this (perimenopause? who knows?!) was “going to be a fucking journey.” One was experiencing occasional night sweats but wasn’t sure how her hormonal IUD (prescribed for her endometriosis) impacted anything. I asked her if her endometriosis symptoms would just go away once she started menopause and she responded: “I feel like no scientist has ever asked that question.” Another friend said she had a spurt of night sweats during a particularly anxious period but they’ve since subsided. Another friend said no to the night sweats but yes to a THREE WEEK cycle. Yeah, that’s a period every 3 fucking weeks. Another friend said her doctor said night sweats at my age were “pretty common” which is VERY helpful. And still another friend wondered if my night sweats might be connected to me weaning a 3.5 year old a year and a half ago. The friend I thought was a fellow night sweater in arms swiftly corrected me.
At the end of the day, people with uteruses are stumbling around in the darkness of stunning medical ignorance, trying to light candles for one another so we don’t fall completely on our faces in our efforts to simply be. We are are all just one text thread away from complete despair over ever really knowing what the fuck is going on with our bodies. Sometimes we have helpful information to offer each other, but mostly we’re just screaming together into the void. As Miranda July writes in All Fours, her fierce explosion of a novel about the middle season of life that occurs between rising and falling, “We never expected answers or for anything to get fixed. The most we ever hoped for was fellowship.”
recently started a thread about menopause (all that we know, all that we don’t know, and all that such a disparity between ignorance and knowledges makes us feel) and there are 619 comments. I recently spent a transformative hour wading through the thread and felt an urge to bind the 619 comments together in gilt and leather, a setting that would befit the rawness and vulnerability uniting so many disparate voices into a chorus that is both terrifying and life-affirming.One person wrote into the rage.
That we have to resort to so much learning, sifting, and advocacy for ourselves, on top of all the other labor required of us in daily life no matter what profession or work we are involved in, is rage inducing, frankly.
Another wrote into the freedom.
I'm 49 and the most exciting part of this is that I have no f*&ks to give! It's absolutely liberating!! Other changes: I mostly only want to talk to/listen to women and I am so into the NBA now.
Others traded tips and commiserated about symptoms (itchy ears?!?!?) Most of them implicitly or explicitly upended notions of identity.
My body and brain have changed and that's ok! I think I accepted all the changes that came with childbearing/raising kid, but I thought that once that ended I'd go back to the "old me". Nope, I'm a new me and still figuring it out - and it's liberating.
It is maddening to live in a mysterious body. It’s shitty to not feel surprised to learn that the medical community knows next to nothing about a massive life shift that has impacted half the world’s population since the beginning of time. As Angela Garbes writes in her column for the Guardian on middle age:
The lengthy and nebulous list of perimenopausal symptoms triggered a familiar feeling in me. When I wrote Like a Mother, a book about the outdated scientific and cultural myths of pregnancy in 2016, nearly every expert I interviewed said some variation of the same thing: compared to what we should know about this basic human process, we know nothing.
It is shocking that so many cultures are so profoundly incurious about what is, essentially, magic. Half of us can create other humans (and food sources for those humans) and then, in our shedding of that creational capability, experience everything from profound brain changes to itchy ears (again ?!?!?!?!?!) to newly curly hair to a loss of a desire to nurture to mind-blowing orgasms. And people with the most power historically haven’t wanted to know why? Haven’t wanted to help make these experiences feel ok for the people undergoing them?
But structural, codified forms of power and knowledge aren’t everything. For as long as straight white men have attempted to underplay and ignore our magical bodies, we’ve been talking to each other. And I guess my lion king sweat story is my small effort to shed just a pinprick of light on what so many of us are fed up with keeping in the dark.
I’m post-menopausal and never experienced anything like you’ve described. I’m so sorry you’re going through this.
A person close to me suffered similar symptoms: vivid, sometimes frightening dreams and drenching night sweats. Blood tests were normal and they were going to chalk it up to perimenopause. Finally, her doctor asked her about snoring (did she snore at all or gasp for breath in her sleep?). Her partner said yes, though it wasn’t loud so it didn’t seem like a big deal. A sleep study confirmed sleep apnea! So, maybe that’s worth checking out for you.
On a semi-related note, I feel like I have to give a plug for the glory of having my own bed as a happily married lady. My husband and I have very different sleep preferences so I sleep on a queen, surrounded by a nest of carefully arranged pillows. He sleeps on a spartan futon (in the same room) with one sad flat pillow (his choice!) and it is the ACTUAL BEST. Sleeping next to him is like sleeping with a space heater and having my own bed means when I'm hot or having a hard time sleeping, at least I don't have another body in bed making it all worse.