In my professional experience, I’ve delivered my share of medical understatement. Falsely reassuring pronouncements, such as “you might feel a slight pinch” when drawing blood, I uttered them daily. Let’s be real, if a pinch really felt like that, those delivering said pinch are either into voodoo, or body piercings, and you’re probably better off avoiding them. Friends don’t stick friends with sharp objects, period. Well, no friends of mine, anyway.

Next on the scale of the medical diminution of pain is the “this might hurt a bit” ruse. You’re likely to hear this when the procedure involves more than a little pain, such as a Novacaine injection during dental work, or the not so pleasant shot in the rump. “This might hurt a bit“ means “please don’t squeeze your friend’s hand so hard that you cut off his/her circulation”.

Further up on the pain ladder is “now, this is gonna hurt”. This means “find a bullet to bite”, and “please don’t hurt me as I tend to you”. Spinal taps and injections into large joints fall into this category. If you hear “now, this will be painful, you’ll have to lie down”, that bullet will need a medicinal whiskey chaser, and you just might see your doctor scanning the exit, in case you flail your limbs in pain. Most wise doctors will give pain meds at this point, as bullets would never make it through the hospital’s metal detectors, and said doctors don’t want to share your pain experience.

I guess it’s only fair, having delivered enough medical understatements to qualify for the “Little White Lies” Olympiad, that I have fallen victim to my own dose of “medicinal white washing”. Luckily, pain is not the issue. My issue involves “The Change”.

THE CHANGE , aka menopause, that period of a woman’s life when estrogen and progesterone levels gradually decrease, until the ovaries finally call it a day. In medical school, I was taught a boat load of signs and symptoms of menopause, with the admonition that this was a perfectly natural process and that the symptoms were gradually progressive, and at their worst, merely irritating. Oh, and that they could be treated.

Clearly, the author of that chapter of my gynecology text was either an overly optimistic, barely pubescent woman, or a man, for these symptoms are far more than “merely irritating”. And having just had a total hysterectomy, these symptoms have been anything but gradual for me. Now that I have a patient’s perspective, let’s look at some of the more common symptoms, and expose the little white lies for what they are.

1. White Lie # 1 – Menopause causes minor problems with memory and concentration.

If constantly forgetting the location of my wallet, my keys, my hairbrush, and my assorted toiletries are considered mild problems with memory and concentration, then sure, my problems are mild. It’s the constant “now where the heck did I put blank” (insert needed object here) that makes the memory loss anything but mild. As for concentration, well, it was only after my surgery that I realized that it takes real concentration to walk, talk, and chew gum at the same time. I had no idea I could suddenly lose the ability to multitask, and that realization hurts. I have to clear my mind now when I walk, or gravity gets the best of me. Mild loss indeed.

White Lie # 2 – Menopause causes mild mood shifts or swings.

Mild mood swings. Sure. If by mild mood swing, you mean telling my kids “if you breathe loudly one more time, I’ll ground you until you collect Social Security”, then yes, the mood swings are mild. But getting irritable with my dogs for looking at me in the wrong tone of voice, well, not only is that not a mild mood swing – it borders on paranoia.

White BOLD FACED LIE # 3 – Menopause causes sudden, brief rushes of heat, known as hot flashes.

I will concede that these rushes occur suddenly, and that they make me feel very, very hot. But in the three months I have experienced them, they have never been brief. They are more like floods, with a deluge of perspiration and the maddening sense that my skin is an out of control brush fire. And they are not brief flashes, they are more like an extended burns, as if someone cranked up the furnace in the middle of summer.

The next time you see your physician, you can take some smug satisfaction in the following fact. The day will come when Dr. Pert and Perky Barbie will begin “The Change”, and karma being the trollop she is, she’s gonna simultaneously forget the location of her keys, cuss her husband over breathing too loud, and experience the hot flash from Hades. I can guarantee that she’ll never again underestimate a patient’s symptoms. Trust me, I know.

Now, ‘fess up – who the hell just turned up the furnace?