Wednesday, July 30, 2008

Of menopause and allergies or maybe more..

A Matured Man and A Menopausing Woman
Some months back...I recalled having a light moment with Kelvin Ng (Buluman) and some of our running mates just before the start of a race. We were joking about being 'creative' in naming our race categories instead of the extremely boring Men Open, Women Open or Men Veteran and Women Veteran. Very quickly we came up with a few ideas eg. Fast & Furious Men, Fit & Fabulous Women, Modern Men, Wise Women or Matured Men and Menopausing Women!! Ha! Ha!
Kelvin immediately admitted that he'll fit himself perfectly into the 'Matured Men' category while I'll just categorise myself into the 'Menopausing Women' category!

The "Midlife Crisis"
Hey, I am not joking! These days it's rather common especially when women entered "midlife" - the popular euphemism for menopause...
Sometimes when I ran out of steam, lost my energy and started getting annoying aches and pains (esp. at the lower back); I began to wonder.."Is it menopause or just the normal effects of aging that kick in simultaneously with menopause?" As a runner and being a woman, I assumed that sometimes my aches, pains and loss of performance are menopause-related, but was informed that the research is vague and the connection unsubstantiated. Nobody knows for sure. I believe that every woman experiences menopause differently and I also know of some women who passed through it with little complaint.

A Hyper-Sensitive Guinea Pig
Perhaps athletic women have more difficulty than other women because we are so used to being in control, and menopause is a phase when one feels tired and definitely not feeling in control anymore especially over what's happening to the body! But things always happened quite uniquely for me, perhaps this is because I was given a super-sensitive body in this life. One of my doctors commented that it is a very good body for them to work as an experiment...No Way!! In other words, I am actually a good guinea pig? Ha! Ha!

A Victim Of Allergies
Jokes aside and to be honest, the slightest misuse of drugs would irritate my eyes and cause it to swell. At times, it's the environment or surroundings that would trigger an explosion of rashes. Sometimes it's the application of a certain product that made me vomit like crazy. Other times it's just the consumption of certain food and I would succumb to an allergy of sorts and my hormones would go hay-wire! I remembered the year where I had 3 analphylatic shocks and living with a BP of 180/120 and gosh, I survived! Last week, I had a piece of Roti Canai for dinner and I passed out a bowl of blood for 3 days!! Scary..

A Seeker seeking to know herself
Some of my friends panicked when I related this to them but to me, I've been quite used to this kind of drama now. So I don't worry too much. This morning I woke up feeling totally unwell..I was sneezing with watery eyes and my head felt heavy as if a migraine would attack anytime. My body, as always was burning. So I need to examine myself - what went wrong? Many times, there's no answer. Sometimes, I just assumed.
My physician suggested that I should record down all my encounters with allergies and share my experiences in the blog. Well, I don't know...I'm still trying to discover more about my body first.

So many questions, so few answers...

2 comments:

CP Waterman said...

Gosh! You do have some allergies, the root cause may just be physiological but if the Doctors can't find it after extensive examination, hmm... it may have its nasty origin from the spiritual. I hope you will soon locate it & unplug it.
Wishing you all the best.

The Runner, Dreamer, Observer, Seeker said...

Yeah, been living with allergies of sorts since I was a kid and I guess it got worsen with age. I'm so immuned to it now that it never crossed my mind about seeking the root cause of it from the spiritual side.
I don't know.