Why did nobody tell me menopause would be like this?

This story was first published on Stuff.

I’m at the shopping mall trying to pay for a small plastic motorbike when it happens again.

“I’m sorry,” I say to the lady at the counter, “but it’s terribly hot, and I just need to cool down.”

That appears a most undramatic sentence when written down, but what it really looks like is this: “I’m sorry,” I say (ripping off my hoodie), “but it’s terribly hot (clawing off my face mask) and I just (flapping my T-shirt to create a draught) need to cool down.’’

Then I bend at the waist; lift great handfuls of hair away from my face and neck, and make a kind of hooting noise. So hot!

As waiting shoppers breathe a collective sign of relief that I’ve stopped stripping, the woman at the counter fans me with a handful of brochures.

“You poor thing,” she says, “nobody tells you about this, eh?”

The nice lady is right; no-one tells you about this because no-one tells you much about menopause at all. Like most inner workings of women, this is something you’re expected to keep to your own sweaty self because the elephant in this room is estrogen and best left ignored.

In fact, the topic is so verboten that we gave it another moniker. Just as Harry Potter’s Voldemort was called “He Who Must Not Be Named”, menopause is referred to as “The Change”. That’s if we refer to it at all.

My menopause kicked early into gear a few months ago, chemically induced by an implant magically switching my ovary off. I have just the one ovary, the other was whipped out years ago, and we’ll shortly review whether its lonely off-sider will follow suit. It’s dramatic, yeah, but so’s the alternative.

But regardless of the why’s and what-for’s, this is menopause and I careened into it oblivious. The symptoms that eight out of 10 of us get might be well-known, but are also couched in gentle language belying their reality.

Brain fog? I sipped olive oil instead of water while making dinner. Disturbed sleep? There’s no sleep. Mood swings? Shut up. I’m sorry!

And as for hot flushes? While I envisaged a sort of pretty blushing, these are more akin to being cooked from the inside out, leaving me to consider the side of the swimming pool my only appropriate social setting.

“I’ve just hopped out of the water,” I’ll fib to whoever, “I always swim in my clothes.”

Joking about menopause is of course part of the reason this most natural life event has largely been erased, minimised and ignored by society.

This year, eight in 10 respondents in the largest survey of UK menopausal women said their workplace offered no basic support and 41% said menopause symptoms were treated as a laugh by colleagues.

Here in New Zealand, employers are also lagging behind, despite women making up almost half of all employees in the workforce aged 50 or over. It’s enough to make your blood boil if it wasn’t doing that already.

Back at the shops and fully dressed, I find an old friend sweating in the supermarket aisle. Years ago, while at similar stages of pregnancy we’d discuss our changing bodies in minute detail, bemoaning the symptoms and delighting in their inevitable outcome.

Today we do the same, just two perspiring pals one-upping each other. She tells me she hasn’t slept properly in months; I tell her I’ve always been hot but this is ridiculous. We both tell each other that people should talk publicly about menopause more.

“I dare you,” she says.