Skin Stuff

I've noticed moles getting bigger, one in particular that's on my leg, right on the front of the shin for all to see when I dare to wear shorts. Anymore, I shy away from showing my gams because I've been blessed with varicose legs.

I inherited some great qualities from my mother, like excellent skin tone and a nice mouth, but also some things that are not so wonderful, including (but not limited to) big, ugly, raised, blue-gray veins that crisscross my legs like a deranged road map. I don't get those cute little pink spidery ones--mine are 8-lane interstates, and they're everywhere.

Back to the mole. So I have this mole on my shin and while it's still nice and round, it seems to be growing. Maybe it's just that my skin is stretching to accommodate my late 40s fat gain, but it's still concerning me just a bit. I got online and did some research like a dutiful little hypochondriac, and on one site it said that if your mole is bigger than a pencil eraser, you might want to have it checked out. So there I was at my office, my leg hitched up on my desk, my jeans rolled up, pressing the wrong end of a pencil into my leg. Sure enough, it's bigger.

The reason for all this paranoi is that someone very close to me has been diagnosed with skin cancer. Fortunately it's not melanoma, but unfortunately it's not basal cell variety either. It's a little more serious but with a 98 percent success rate when treated early. And I'm very confident it's early enough, but still a scare. I guess that's one more health concern we have to look forward to as we age.

Skin stuff. Please keep an eye on your epidermis, folks. It could save your life.

No more flipping of the finger

It's happened. I can't flip anyone off anymore. At least not first thing in the morning. Not that there's anyone I really need to flip off first thing in the morning, save for the poolman peering in the window before I've put on my 'face' or the trash guys who clatter down the street before god-fearin' folks are even awake. But it's nice to know you can give someone the bird on command.

Problem is my hands don't want to work in the mornings. Not sure if it's arthritis or too much salt or not enough salt or a hormonal imbalance or some rare Nubian disease I picked up telepathically while watching the National Geographic channel, but my fingers don't want to do what I want them to do. They just don't.

The other morning my right hand was completely numb, kind of like when your foot falls asleep, but this time it took about half an hour to come back to life. No joke. And after it did, I couldn't make a fist or even pick up a cup of coffee for another half. I ask you, WTF? I'm waaaay too young for these shenanigans. I'm also too young to be using the word 'shenanigans.'

The point is I'm barely pushing 50. My doctor father will tell you it's because I do too much with my hands between typing all day,knitting at night, playing tennis in the mornings, and the bare knuckle cage fighting on weekends.

I've decided he might be on to something, so I'm giving up the knitting.

The Musty Mother of Invention

Once again, my sleep, which is restless anyway since beginning perimenopause, was interrupted by a dream. In my dream, I was running a marathon and I was just about to cross the finish line--alone, because I had left everyone else stumbling in my wake--I slipped in a pool of my own perspiration. Humiliated, I writhed on the dirty asphalt of some random city street where they have such silly things as marathons, the sweat pouring off me in rivulets, which became streams, which became a river that swept up all the other marathon participants sending them crashing into buildings and traffic lights. I could see their heads and numbered bibs bobbing as they briskly flowed into a dirty ocean created by the fervent pumping of my sweat glands.

I screamed out, "Please forgive me, for I know not what I've done!" for ruining the race and quite possibly drowning a few of the runners, but my apologies were lost in a gust of rancid wind. I awoke in a panic, my sheets soaked from what are becoming regular bouts of night sweats, and my skin prickling from the soft whir of the air purifier.

I whispered to my partner, "Are you sleeping?" She obviously didn't hear me so I added a gentle nudge and asked a little louder.

"Hey, are you asleep?" "Wha?" she responded.

"Oh good, I was afraid maybe I woke you up with my sweating. I had this really weird dream..." I proceeded to tell her all about it, and even made her touch the damp sheets on my side of the bed.

"Sorry 'bout that," she said with a yawn. "Too bad they can't make sheets like diapers."

"Go back to sleep, you're not making any sense," I said, and got up to get a towel to place over the wettest part of the sheet so I could try to finish out the night without catching pneumonia. As I laid in bed, I started to think about what she said about sheets as diapers, and suddenly the proverbial light bulb went off in my dusty brain, singing away the cobwebs and other assorted debris that had gathered there since my hormones made concentration a periodic and very tedious activity.

Moisture-wicking linen! They make athletic clothing out of moisture-wicking material, why not sheets? What a great idea! I shook LB. "You're a genius!"

"Wha?" she groaned. "That thing about diapers; It's brilliant!"

"S'good. Night now."

I decided to let her sleep while I lay awake preparing a marketing plan for our new invention that was sure to make us millionaires, nay, trillionaires! With the female portion of the boomer generation securely anchored in menopause and the Gen Xers not far behind, the timing was perfect. I got as far as the first line of the jingle, "Keeping Dry is No Sweat"... when I realized we were out of toothpaste and this took me right into a shopping list, which then led me to having to drive to Costco and the fact that my car needed an alignment, which made me look at the fact that Costco gas is cheaper than Shell, which got me thinking about the economy, which made me so depressed I thought what's the point of inventing moisture-wicking sheets since no one can afford to buy anything, which made me anxious so I started sweating all over again.

Such is the circle of insanity at three o'clock in the morning.

Forgetfulness Part II Post It Notes

So this was my big plan as of March 30th. Today it's April 10th. And guess what, I forgot to buy the damn Post-It notes.

It's not all fun and games

The ability to laugh at one's self makes the inevitable marker of aging in women— menopause— much more tolerable. If you can't find the humor in hot flashes, get a snicker out of night sweats, or giggle at vaginal dryness you're in for long, wrinkled road. Laughter makes unpalatable things palatable.

One thing that's not so funny about aging, though, is that the people you love age right along with you. Parents. I've been really fortunate so far in that both my mother and my father, who will both be 83 this spring, have enjoyed a healthy, active life overall. Recently, however, the inevitible has begun to creep up in what was once just a dark distance. My father's health has suffered in the last 18 months to the melancholoy tune of three major surgeries--the last of which has him still in the hospital, his once nimble mind and bouyant spirit sorely compromised as his body struggles to recover. Through this process I've been forced to accept the truth: my parents are in the last stage of their lives.

I am reminded of a birthday card I have in my stack of cards (I collect them just to make sure I always have one ready for any occasion, but I invariably end up going out to buy one for every occasion.) It's a crudely drawn cartoon of a car barreling down a one-lane highway and trailing behind visible in the car's rear view mirror is the Grim Reaper, hood, scythe and all. The captions reads: "Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear. Happy Birthday."

I've had that card for years. I thought it was really funny once. Now it's just sad. And true.

Old man in the mirror

You always hear women complaining that they're becoming their mothers. Well, I'm becoming my father. I caught an unfortunate glimpse of myself in the bathroom mirror this morning as I was creaking my way to the can and there I was, hunched and shuffling around like an old man. It takes about 10 minutes for my body to respond to being awake, straighten itself and get blood pumping to aching muscles and stiff bones. Five years ago it took five minutes and I imagine in five more years it'll take 15 or 20. Time is no friend to the aging.
Thought for the day: What is it about sleeping as you age that makes you feel like you've just run a marathon?

Curses!

"Are you still menstruating," asked the nurse during my last visit to the doctor. A year ago I would've been insulted by this very transparent allusion to my aging body. Growing up I always looked young for my age, but in an ironic reversal of misfortune, as I get older that gap between perceived age and actual age is narrowing with each advancing year. Really now, shouldn't it be the other way around? *sigh*

"Yes I'm still menstruating," I bit back. As my behavior analyst girlfriend would say, I was showing 'signs of damage.' I'm frustrated that I'm still having to put up with my uninvited 'monthly visitor' AND dealing with the symptoms of perimenopause. It's just not fair. None of it. I'm starting to look my age; my period is nastier than ever (cramps, PMS, bloating--the whole shebang); I wake up to soggy sheets virtually every morning; I'm harvesting hair in unwanted places; and yes, Nurse Ratchett, I'm still menstruating, goddamit (oh, did I already mention that?) See? Signs of damage.

The way I see it is this: you either curse the curse or curse the sweats, but not both at the same time.
C'mon, give us girls a break!

Helga Rising

Contrary to being able to cough up a shower squirrel every time I bathe, I'm really not a hairy person. I can go weeks without putting a razor to my legs and only sport a handful of silky nubs. If I were a blonde I'd probably never have to shave the gams at all, but being a bonafide brunette those little buggers--sparse as they may be--are black as night. That's why this new phase of aging is all the more perplexing: The hair I'm losing on my head is popping back up in places that prior to 40 were smooth as a baby's tush.
Enter Helga.
My girlfriend first spotted her one evening as we were getting ready to go to a ritzy black-tie event. As I stood in the bathroom applying my third coat of lip gloss, teetering on four-inch stilettos in a crush of red velvet, she gave me the customary once-over to make sure that my tags were tucked and my mascara hadn't migrated to my cheekbones. Her eyes suddenly grew as big as dinner plates and then narrowed into indiscernible slits as she enveloped me in a rush of heightened concern.
"Oh my god!!" she cried, grabbing the loop from the bathroom shelf (she has a slight obsession with analyzing minute body parts like skin, nail shavings, etc--anything that can be magnified) and affixing it to my chin.
"It's magnificent!"
Knowing full well that when she says something's 'magnificent' while looking through the loop it usually means it's some sort of biological anomaly bordering on grotesque, I panicked.
"What is it?! Do I have a big fat zit? Dear Lord tell me it's not about to erupt right before we walk down the red carpet!"
"No, it's not a zit. It's more of a..." her voice trailed off as she pressed the loop harder into my skin. "I'm not sure how to describe it. I've never seen anything quite like it."
"Jesus," I snorted. "Let me see."
I pushed my way to the makeup mirror which, unfortunately, magnifies everything by 10 and turned on the light, just to make sure the discovery was as horrific as possible.
It was a massive whisker. Not just your average run-of-the-mill granny chin hair, but a mean-spirited, menacing follicle with a shaft the size of a coax cable. And to make matters worse, it was gray! I'd already begun to pluck those coarse bastards from my nether regions, but this really took the cake, ate it and threw it up on my face.
"Get rid of it!" I screamed hysterically, clearing the bathroom shelf with one broad sweep of my arm in a desperate attempt to find the tweezers.
"Easy, easy now," my sweet-tempered gal crooned. "I'll take care of Helga." A fitting name considering the whisker's temperament and girth.
She grabbed what looked like needle-nose pliers, put on her reading glasses and gave it a quick yank. But Helga didn't budge.
"Stubborn little shit, isn't she?" she teased.
"This is no time for levity! Please, please get rid of it," I begged.
"Okay, hold on. This one's going to do the trick," she said, bracing herself with her foot on the toilet seat. "One, two... three!"
I felt a sting as she deftly plucked Helga from her post.
"Got her!"
She laid Helga carefully on a sheet of toilet paper and placed the loop over her. "Let's take a look, shall we?"
"Do we have to?" I whined.
"Yes! It's fascinating. Don't you want to know what your body produces?"
"Not really. No." But I couldn't resist taking a gander at this gargantuan hair that sprouted from my chin. Helga was truly impressive, in a Guinness Book sort of way, with a root system that rivaled the majestic Sequoias.
"Are you sure you got all of her?" I asked, hoping that what I'd heard was true. That if you get a hair by the roots it's gone for good.
"Pretty sure I did. Guess we'll have to wait and see."
And wait we did.