It must be the thermostat again, she thought. After all, it is an old apartment, and the temperature on the dial doesn’t always match the heating and cooling going on in the room. Maybe it kicked up a notch while I was sleeping.
After a change of clothes and a few towels on the bed sheets – and a quick check of the thermostat – Sarah went back to sleep. The next day, the incident was forgotten in her busy schedule of work and a dinner that night.
The problem would remain just one of those things if it was just that one time. But it wasn’t the thermostat’s fault, as Sarah would discover later in the month when it happened again. In fact, the severe sweating was the first announcement of hot flashes, the waves of warmth that mark perimenopause or the onset of actual menopause.
Hot flashes are very common but are embarrassing to discuss for many women. Menopause marks the permanent end of a woman’s menstrual periods. To many, it is a sign that old age has arrived. In our youth-oriented culture, that’s sometimes viewed as a stamp of obsolescence.
But perimenopause and menopause are perfectly natural conditions, and while hot flashes are disturbing, they are just a physical manifestation of this remarkable change of life.