Bloody hell, I’m getting old.

FAIR WARNING: This post discusses bodily functions! If the realities of What Comes Out Of Your Body are abhorrent to you, you might want to click away. ASAP.

The Bloody JOY of Aging

I am getting old, yo.

Like, there is the creaky bones and throw-your-back-out-without-even-trying thing. And there is the soreness and tiredness thing. The Why did all the fat in my body just migrate to my belly? thing and the totally-exhausted-because-I-woke-up-today-and-THAT-was-a-lot-of-work thing are sort of just… always-present givens. And nevermind the hairy chin and wrinkles and swollen feet (!! — the fuck?!) and age spots and all that good stuff.

But there is also the must-always-have-a-bathroom-accessible thing (which sucks, lemmetellya) and the Is my body reacting to the food? The medicine? The sun cycle, the stock market, the speed limit??? WTF?!? thing.

Which has been A Thing^TM more than usual lately.

Too. Bloody. Fun.

So at the beginning of last week (end of June), my husband and I traveled to the other side of the mountains for some rest and relaxation.¹ And during the time we were on our little mini-vacation, we experienced a little heat wave. And during that little heat wave, I got all kinds of stopped up.

IfyouknowwhatImean.

Weirdly, I was eating way more than I normally would (hot weather usually means “stop food” for me, but in this instance I was STARVING and so I fed my face), which meant there was plenty for my body to digest.

And yet, my body was like… Let’s just make a food baby!

And for DAYS (seriously, like four days), my colon decided it was gestating a food spawn and I did not poop.

I was drinking fluids. I was consuming things that should have had me running to the bathroom. (Milkshakes, anyone?)

BUT{T} — Nada.

And when I finally was able to go, it was unpleasant. Not crampy unpleasant. Just… Strainy and clenchy and Jayzus, what am I passing here? A block of cement? kind of unpleasant.

And at some points — then, and ever since; I’m still not rightly sorted in this department — I felt like I was trying to eliminate shards of glass.

And the result of the glass-shard cement-poo: there was blood.

(The bright red kind. Not the scary black kind.)

So I’m like…

Is this hemorrhoids?

Or did I just rip myself a new asshole?

EITHER WAY

Oh. Fucking. Joy.

And on the flip side (or the underside)…

This week (read: the week that is currently ending), I have been peeing like mad.

I was a little concerned that my rear-end issues were related to dehydration last week so I’ve been pushing fluids — especially water — like a hummingbird stroking out on pollen juice this week. But whereas normally that kind of hydrative activity would regulate the arse end of things and perhaps produce more volume in the urinary department, it doesn’t typically cause me to have to pee with more frequency. It’s just that when I pee, there’s more that comes out. If that makes sense.

But, NOPE.

So I have been running to the bathroom like nine times a day lately.

Plus getting up in the middle of the night to pee.²

Which… You’d think that if I went THAT MUCH during the day — and we’re talking massive volume here — and also emptied my bladder immediately before going to bed, that I should be good for the six hours I tend to sleep.

NOPE.

The night of the fourth (that’s Independence Day in the states for those of you who are not making the connection), I was up every 90 minutes from midnight til 6:00am.

And also with a migraine.

And since I have, in the past, been prone to urinary tract infections, I was starting to worry a little bit. Because this is not normal.

And then after the flood…

…came the blood.

So in total, I’d been dealing with weird bathroom issues for about a week and half when one of my pee trips brought with it an added delight.

BLOOD

At first, I thought maybe my bits were getting a bit irritated, y’know? All that flooding and wiping and whatnot.

But there was no pain associated with it. And the urinary urgency had started to reduce, so I was like…

???

And then it happened a second time.

That time the blood was not only brownish but also blotchy.

What… The…

…OH.

Am I having a period?!

Dear God in Heaven, no. Please no.

But apparently…

Yes.

Or at least a miniature version of ‘yes’.

And y’know…

I’ve been (peri)menopausal for several years now.³ With all my reproductive health issues and considering my family medical history, the fact that I’m experiencing this change-of-life business in my 40s (instead of my 50s or later) is not a surprise.

And, granted, as part of my medication regimen — both for my migraines and for my PCOS regulation — I have been taking hormonal birth control without the placebo for several years. So how much of the non-periods I experience are from the PCOS and how much is from regulation of the PCOS and how much is down to menopause is unclear.

But generally speaking…

When I first went on the birth control as a PCOS-control, I still had periods once in a while (like twice a year) and the deal was: when my body decided on its own that it was going to bleed, I’d come off the pills until it stopped and then go back on them continuously until my lady bits threw a fit again six or eleven months later.

And then that whole ‘once in a while’ thing became ‘once in a great while’ (a year and a half between bleeding episodes) and then a ‘never’ thing.

So the last time I had any kind of period(ish) experience was more than two years ago.

And now this.

And I can see you are thinking, “But doesn’t menopause mean your periods stop?”

The answer: All I can say is that for me — obviously, given the events of this week — it means ‘periods pause’.

And then ‘period randomly resumes’.

Presumably followed by ‘period disappears again’.⁴

And it sucks.

I’m bleeding (still, as of this writing — three days into this fiasco) lightly, but the fact of the matter is: I’m bleeding. Period.

And lemme tellya: When it’s been years since you’ve worn a tampon and your body does not generally respond well at the moment to any kind of ‘up inside le vag’ activity in general, the whole plugging up the flow thing is super uncomfortable.

And with the other issues I’ve been having over the past couple weeks related to Bodily Eliminations^TM, I’m like…

Ugh.

SO.

As should be abundantly clear from this post: I am having a bloody fabulous time.

How about you?

.

¹What we actually traveled for was some warm sunshine and a bit of Howdy Do (if you know what I mean), but with the high temp reaching 119 degrees — actual degrees, not ‘feels like’ degrees; the heat index was above that — there was an overabundance of the former and a complete elimination of the latter.

²This part of the program is not all that unusual; I have a bladder the size of a lentil.

³I wrote one of my first experiences with this in 2017.

⁴I remember my mother having something like this happen. She hadn’t had a period for several years and then one day her body was just like, “Oh that’s right! There’s this whole sloughing-off thing I know how to do!” and WHAM, she was stuck in Periodville for like ten days in her mid-50s. Which… I guess that gives me something to look forward to?