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This Is Us
Anatomy of a Hot Flash
These brief flares remind me of my body’s capacity for upheaval and renewal
Standing in the kitchen on a cool early fall day, chopping the last of the late summer sauce tomatoes, I’m suddenly overwhelmed by a bloom of heat in my body. Rapidly expanding heat from head to toe, feeling fall no more, but a heat wave flush, like a sweltering summer day.
Is it me or is it hot in here?
The hot flash is the darling of menopause symptoms, the signal marker of what some consider midlife female malfunction. Hot flash is synonymous with menopause, and those without a clue (men, young women, lucky women) begin their short, practiced list of meno ills with the flash. Flashes (or flushes), insomnia, and irritability seem to top these novice lists. If only a flash, a bad night, and a worse mood were the worst of it.
If only.
The flashes are interesting, in the right light. In bed, or in a still, safe, quiet space, the sudden burst of internal fire is remarkable. It’s like a blooming, an expansion of interior landscape — me filling the space around me and becoming more, somehow. It can be almost empowering, as if a previously unknown strength within is suddenly exposed. Flashes also, however, make for their own special kind of misery, especially when they continue to present for many years. I am two years post-meno and still entertain the random visiting flash. I never counted my flashes, never had a “Flash Count Diary,” but at peak production, I probably had more than a dozen a day, sometimes several in quick succession, almost like pulsing flashes.
I entertained the notion that a new, better me was being forged in the fires of this seemingly random and sourceless heat.
An intense hot flash in an unwelcome setting (almost anywhere other than bed, with almost anyone other than your closest familiars) is alarming and extremely uncomfortable. It was a source of anxiety for me, as I was quickly overwhelmed by a power and heat that could not, would not be contained. A real, weapons-grade hot flash (of which I had hundreds, if not thousands) is accompanied by aggressive sweating and…
