Not fit for purpose
Pretty much everything, including me
The women’s changing room at my gym has one changing cubicle, two showers, and three hairdryers. I sometimes entertain myself by wondering what, exactly, the designers were envisioning when they came up with this curious plan. Only one woman may get changed in private. But two can use the showers simultaneously (one of them presumably undressing in the open). And then somehow there is a third woman, who has not changed or showered but is in need of a hairdryer.
What were they thinking? Of course, the obvious answer to this conundrum is that no one was really thinking at all. They just shoved in whatever they thought would fit, without any regard to how the space would actually be used.
Luckily for me, I am mostly inured to terrible design issues, having grown up with my mother, a woman whose approach to interior decoration was perhaps best described as ‘challenging’.
My mother liked to distress things. (And people.) A cupboard would be scoured and scratched until it looked like she’d dragged it out of the tip. A lovely oak wardrobe would be painted with white gloss and then ragrolled so it could pass for something from Temu. Not that Temu was a thing in those days. If it had been, my mother would probably have gone insane with the sense of possibility. And she really didn’t need any more stresses on her sanity.
But let’s circle back to my sanity, shall we? Because I may have lost it this week, specifically on Tuesday afternoon, mid-phone call with my GP. Am I mental, or is it actually not cool to try to give your patients SSRIs when what they actually need is HRT?
I’d thought that wasn’t a thing anymore, fobbing women off with antidepressants to calm down our silly little heads. I assumed the NHS had been Davina’d into submission and we were all in the thrall of Big Menopause now. But apparently not. Not in this little corner of the world. Here we are going to hold the fuck out for old-fashioned standards, like putting all your female patients on psychiatric medication and telling them that there’s no need to worry about their menopause symptoms because those symptoms don’t matter if you’re not married.
To be honest, I wasn’t even sure I wanted HRT until the doctor told me he didn’t want to prescribe it on account of me being single. But at that moment a divine and righteous rage took over my body and I heard myself saying, “With all due respect, Doctor…” in a tone which made it clear that all the respect I considered due could have fitted in a matchbox without taking the matches out first. At this point I think both of us understood that I would be getting HRT, actually. And that he had picked the wrong menopausal woman to mess with.
My mother never took HRT and she was an absolutely insane person who couldn’t go a week without repainting the living room a disgusting shade of orange or bringing in some twigs from the garden and spray painting them gold fine. It isn’t for everyone, and maybe it isn’t for me, but this menopause thing has been going on for about 15 years at this point and I have had enough.
My main menopause symptoms at the moment are: 1) being annoyed at the stupid layout of the gym changing room, and 2) being annoyed by the fact that my gym friend can bench press more than I can. She’s on HRT and I am sure it gives her a 5kg advantage. We work out together sometimes and that annoys me too, because only one of us can get changed afterwards, and I personally think it ought to be the one who was humiliated by the extra 2.5kg plates.
I suspect that those of you who are interested have already seen it, but my first Wake of the Ancestors post went out this week to a lovely warm response. You’re very welcome to join in over there if it seems appealing. I’m currently recording a podcast asking whether humans invented writing 40,000 years ago, and writing an article about the craft of re-enchantment, and I’ve got all sorts of other stuff lined up. But if you’re mainly interested in my menopause, gym activity, and the comings and goings of Rhyl’s smackhead community, you’d better just hang around here.
If you’d like to support my slide into ever more profound hormone-based madness, subscribe. And if you’re already a paying subscriber, look yourself dead in the eye and know YOU are one of the few people who really matter a damn in this mixed up world. And you’re very good looking, too.
What? No HRT because you are single?What madness is that?! Not surprised you were hopping mad!
Last week I was advised by a specialist to take a supplement that, when mixed with my current medication, could kill me. Another specialist, when I was nearly in tears because he refused to give me the meds that I needed, responded with, "Well I've seen worse". Yet another, when I told her I felt worse, said that I can't because the survey I filled in gave a different impression.
GPs often know very little about lots of things as they're generalists by design, but specialists are very often the worst personality types for healthcare ... or basic human decency.