MENOPAUSE WHAT?? Seriously??

That was the text my friend Bee sent me after I told her what I'd be doing this summer.

I went to my doctor expecting to talk about surgery, birth control, and/or pain management. Instead he suggested menopause. Temporarily. 

"Let's shut everything down for six months," he said. "See if that helps." 

While part of me was intrigued by the mental image of myself as a cyborg fembot who can shut down bits here and there at will, most of me was taken up with a silent internal scream of, "But I don't want to go through menopause!"

I'm 34!

I went to find a picture of a female robot (turn on SafeSearch first) so I could make a joke about Rosie never having to worry about menopause. Then I discovered that "sexy Rosie Hallowe'en costume" was a thing. So there's that.

After some adjustment and a serious cry at Bee's house, I've gotten more comfortable with the idea of the Summer of Menopause. I'll be taking monthly injections of Lupron Depot to suppress my estrogen levels. I had my first one on the 18th of July and will continue through till the 18th of December. I'm still worried about the changes my body will go through, but I'm keeping up a mantra of, "It's only 6 months and you'll feel much better after."

The idea is that without estrogen, all my endomees will starve and shrink away, and I'll be left symptom-free for at least a few years. When the endomees do start growing back, we'll be able to manage them more easily than now, when they're allovertheplace.

So far I haven't experienced any side effects from the shot, other than feeling wicked tired these last few days (but that might be because I'm extremely busy at the moment). But it's only been a week. It can apparently take 2-3 weeks before the first side effects from the shot materialize. Here's hoping that when they do come, they're a minor irritation on my way to feeling healthier all the time.