The Hot Flush Fairy

Long ago and far away I can remember my lovely Ma wandering around our home in the deepest, darkest and coldest of winters wearing summer clothes. Often she was quite red in the face and she seemed to be incredibly distracted most of the time. I have become my Ma … although possibly not quite so lovely but rather more distracted.

I am being visited with boring regularity by the Hot Flush Fairy. She’s not one of the nice fairies who live at the bottom of the garden. She’s vile. She inhabits whichever room, car, bed, shopping centre or street I happen to be in and so far she’s only really bothering me as neither my husband nor my son can see her or feel any of her delightful little tricks.

About two months ago, on the advice of my doctor, I stopped taking my HRT tablets and this seemed to herald the arrival of the Hot Flush Fairy. I have been back to the doctor to plead with him to let me resume taking HRT but he has refused and he wasn’t able to provide any magic spells to banish the Hot Flush Fairy from my kingdom either. He did offer me some teeny tiny blue tablets that he said were the same as HRT but “without the oestrogen”. I take them religiously but the damned fairy is still plaguing me. She’s resistant to Dixarit and positively thumbs her nose at Black Cohosh, Red Clover, soya and Selenium. She’s going to stick with me until SHE decides to go. And meanwhile, I am living in my own personal tropical paradise. If I walk the dog, I go out wearing suitable attire for windy, wet conditions & come back carrying almost everything except a tee-shirt which, if I weren’t so “modest”, I’d divest myself of too. I want my oestrogen back. Please somebody … anybody … give me back my oestrogen.

Well – of course, no-one IS going to give my oestrogen back to me so I had better get used to behaving in the bizarre fashion that has been MY norm for the past couple of months. And whilst I’m getting used to it, my husband had better get used to it, too. I have no idea why I go upstairs, then have to come back downstairs to remember why I’d gone upstairs in the first place. I really and truly don’t forget to switch on the oven on purpose (although possibly a room with an oven switched on in it is not exactly the right place for me just now) – and, anyway, salads are healthy so he should just shut up. I find bed the most unappealing place on earth and not only when he’s actually at home – but the idea of having a duvet over me when the Hot Flush Fairy visits is an entirely abhorrent thought altogether. I don’t know WHY I insisted on purchasing a Slanket whilst the Fairy is reigning supreme except there ARE moments when I suddenly feel freezing cold and wrapping myself in a Slanket seems like a very logical thing to do when these rare moments occur – but then, of course, I have to muster the energy to sling the Slanket off when the Fairy bids me so to do.

My lovely Ma did eventually stop wandering around the house in summer clothes in deep mid-winter … I can’t remember how many deep mid-winters it took her to stop doing it but I know that she did. I wonder for how long I will be in this phase? I wish someone could give me the answer because, in rare moments of lucidity, I do actually recognise that I am going as barmy as a cartload of monkeys and I would truly like it to stop.

Excuse me now, please. I have to go and wander around the garden in my nightdress. It is raining and blowing a gale out there but if I’m quick, I might be able to leave the Hot Flush Fairy out there and dash back in feeling ever so slightly cooler.