Noun: hot flush; plural noun: hot flushes; noun: hot flash; plural noun: hot flashes

A sudden feeling of feverish heat, typically as a symptom of the menopause.

 

If you are a lady of a certain age, you may have already gone through the menopause when you have treatment for cancer.  But if you haven’t experienced this delightful episode in your life, the treatment will send you head-first into it, with a rocket up its arse.

 

I was actually quite smug about the prospect of my periods stopping.  30 odd years of ‘the curse’ is quite enough.  Especially the post-baby years when the contents of your womb eject themselves like a grab lorry dropping its load from your vagina every 3-4 weeks.

 

So when I was informed that the type of treatment I was about to have would stop my periods and induce menopause I thought ‘happy days!’

 

However.  Hot Flushes.  Oh my goodness.  It is like a furnace being lit somewhere deep inside your body which rapidly spreads and you feel like there must be steam actually billowing from the back of your neck and the top of your head.  Having no hair doesn’t bloody help either as there is nothing to absorb the river of sweat that appears from nowhere and drips down your face, or gathers attractively on your upper lip.  It wreaks havoc with your drawn-on eyebrows, I can tell you.

 

Sometimes these flushes last a minute or two, and sometimes they go on for ages.  It feels like you have just got over one, and another one is flowing over you straight away.  It’s a nightmare in the car, with the air-con.  Hot, cold, hot, cold, window open, heater on….  And, at night time when sleep is eluding you anyway because of the steroid wasps in your head, you lay there in a pool of your own sweat.  This is not the sexiest time of your life, trust me.  I spent a good 6 months at night with the covers off, windows wide open, fan blowing full blast and husband shivering beside me.

 

I don’t know if the effects of menopause are more severe because they come on so suddenly, or that it has been unnaturally, prematurely, drug-induced; or whether the effects would have been the same had it all happened in its own time.  For me, the symptoms have lessened over time.  9 months on I still get the occasional hot flush, but nowhere near or as severe as they were.  I hope it doesn’t bloody well mean I’ll start getting periods again!