I recently posted on facebook that my hot flashes were having hot flashes, and I got lots of responses from women (AND MEN!) with their favorite ways to describe hot flashes: "power surges," "your inner child playing with matches," "my body's own personal summer," and "personal trip to the tropics."  I've always been more comfortable in cold temperatures than hot. My theory is you can always get warm by putting on more clothes, but you can't always cool off. Bottom line, hot flashes suck, especially in Atlanta during our 8 months of summer!

I've hesitated to broach this subject because people tend to associate hot flashes and other menopausal symptoms with old, cranky and crazy women.  But people had such a good sense of humor about it on facebook, and that surprised and delighted me because young and older women who experience breast cancer can also have menopausal symptoms if their cancer is positive for the estrogen and progesterone receptor, as mine was.  Chemotherapy and the drugs one is treated with for (typically) 5 years after other treatments can bring on menopause for young women, and worsen the symptoms for women already experiencing it because the drugs block the production of estrogen and progesterone which feed the cancer.  I had pre-menopausal symptoms for a long time before I was diagnosed.  I had been taking hormones which had been working amazingly well for me and, of course, had to stop taking them immediately upon receiving my cancer diagnosis.  Symptoms of menopause include many different, mostly unpleasant, things, but the hot flashes bother me the worst!  I can be sitting in a perfectly cool room having a nice chat and glass of wine (a typical hot flash inducer) with a friend, and suddenly the flush courses through my body, sweat trickling down my entire body as though I'm plowing a field outside in 100 degree temperatures. Nothing will stop it -- you're constantly asking people, "is it warm in here?"  And the flash happens so abruptly that there's nothing else to do but tell what's happening to you so people don't think you're having a stroke!  I was at a remote this past weekend in the 94 degree weather, OUTSIDE, on pavement, under a light tent that was positioned where the sun shined under most of it -- OMG, after two hours of that I SWAM home! 

It's only (officially) the first day of summer in Atlanta, though we've been experiencing summer symptoms for 2 months now and will continue to long after it's officially fall.  Here's to the women who experience summer all year long!