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Perimenopause had me clawing my vjay raw through a wool skirt in the communion line. Back in the pew, my husband said "Again?" without moving his lips. I'm 47. I sat on my hands for the rest of the service, like a child, so they couldn't go back. He didn't ask what it was. He'd stopped asking months ago. I'd given him the same answer so many times he could have given it to me. A yeast thing. Somewhere around the fifth time I said it, it stopped being an explanation and started being a fact about me. My husband was married to a woman who got them. ======== I knew what it was because I'd had one before. Twenty-four, a course of antibiotics for a chest infection, and a week I still remember. So when the outside started up at 46, same place, same feeling, I didn't need anyone to give me the name. I already had it. And it was the outside. I want to be exact about that, because it matters later. The part with hair on it. Never inside. Never burning, never when I peed. Just that skin, dry and tight the way your knuckles get in winter, and an itch in it that had its own opinion about when I'd sleep. My shins were doing it too, in bed. But that was winter. The inside of my ears. But that was the heating. I never put any of it in the same sentence. Why would I? Only one of them had a name. Fourteen months. One pharmacist, one doctor, three swabs. The only question anyone asked me the whole time was my husband's, and it was the wrong one. ======== The first box was the one-day cream from the pharmacy. It worked. A week, quiet. I knew what it was. I'd had it before. Then it came back and I bought the three-day. Then the seven-day, which got me four days. Then the doctor, and the pill, which got me nothing at all. Then the suppositories a woman on a forum swore by, which got me two days. By the fourth box I was driving to the pharmacy in the next town so the girl at ours would stop knowing my face. And every time I searched it, at whatever hour, I got the same answer back. Yeast. Recurrent yeast. Yeast in perimenopause. I'd type my symptom and the internet would hand me my own word back, and I'd feel better for about a minute, because at least it was a thing. ======== The first swab was after box three. Clear. The second was after box five, because clear was obviously a mistake. Clear. The third time I asked for everything. The whole list. Yeast, BV, every STD there's a test for. All of it, so I'd never have to lie awake wondering again. All of it came back clean. I thought clean would feel like relief. It felt like running out. Clean meant I'd run out of things to be wrong with, and I was still scratching in the waiting room. My doctor was kind about it. She said at my age it was most likely the drop in estrogen, and she gave me a cream for the inside. I want to be fair to her, because that was the right answer. It just wasn't the whole answer. I used it. The inside got better. Properly better, within weeks. The outside carried on exactly as before. I had no idea what to do with that. Half of me fixed. The half I'd never once complained about. ======== Here's what the word did at home. Every time he asked, yeast thing. Every time he glanced, yeast thing. Until he stopped asking and I stopped explaining and it was just a thing about our house, like the boiler. Friday is film night. 19 years of it. That year I got up every twenty minutes. Water. Loo. Checking the back door. He stopped asking where I was going somewhere around box two. And the bed. I'll say this once. I moved to the edge of it for most of that year, because I thought I had something, and you don't give someone something. Now the part I'm most embarrassed about, because I was holding the answer and I read it wrong. It was worse the week before my period. Every month, like a bill. Quieter once I bled. I noticed. I even searched it. And the internet told me hormones make you more prone to yeast, and I thought, well, there you are, my body's just decided to do this now. The one pattern that should have told me everything, and I fed it to the word. ======== I counted them on a Sunday afternoon. I'd just bought the seventh box. It was still in my bag. I sat on the bed and got the others out of the drawer and laid them on the duvet in the order I'd bought them. Six. Four open. Two finished. Fourteen months. I looked at them like they were somebody else's. He came in for his glasses and saw them and didn't say anything for a while. Then he said, not looking at me, "You do that to your legs in your sleep, you know." I said, what? "Your shins. You scratch them in your sleep. You have since the heating came on." I didn't know that. I knew my shins itched in bed. I didn't know they itched when I wasn't awake to blame the winter. So I did something I hadn't done in fourteen months. I went back to the start. When was box one? That winter. Heating on, shins start, ears start, and about three weeks later I'm at the pharmacy for the one-day cream. Same month. Same four weeks. I'd never put them together, because three of them were winter and one of them had a name. ======== My husband's sister is a nurse. Bev. Twenty-odd years on wards, the kind of nurse who says the thing. We were at his mum's the Sunday after the boxes, and I don't know what got into me. Maybe the boxes. But I said it, at the sink, with Bev drying. I said, I've had a yeast thing on and off for over a year and the tests keep telling me I haven't. She said, "Does anything else itch?" I laughed. I said my shins, in bed. The inside of my ears. My scalp. My feet the second the light goes off, but that's just winter. She stopped drying. Fourteen months. One pharmacist, one doctor, three swabs. And my husband's sister with a tea towel was the first person to ask it. ======== She asked me four more things before she'd say anything, and I'm going to give you all four, because she told me to. Is it only there? No. Has the skin changed how it looks? Gone pale, or white, or papery, or changed shape at all? No. Is it burning, or right at the opening, or worse when you pee? No. It's the outside. It itches. It doesn't burn. Have you been tested and cleared? Three times. Then she said this, and I'm giving it to you exactly as she said it. "If it were only there, I'd send you to a specialist and I wouldn't say another word. Same if you'd been tested and cleared and it was still only there. That's not a sister-in-law conversation, that's a proper look from someone who does this. If the skin had changed, or it burned, that's a different thing and a different doctor. I'd rather send you to the right person than be interesting at a sink. But you just told me your shins." ======== Then she told me the thing nobody had, and it's simple enough that I'm still angry it took a tea towel. Down there isn't one thing. It's two. Inside is one kind of tissue. Wet, no hair, delicate. That's the part that gets dry in menopause, that's the part the cream from my doctor is built for, and it works. She was right. Keep using it. The outside, the part with hair on it, the part I'd been clawing in a communion line, is skin. The same skin as my shins. It has the same problem my shins have. And a cream built for the inside isn't built for it. That's why half of me got better. The cream went where it was made to go. Bev put it like this. Your lips chap. The inside of your cheek never does. Same face, two materials, and only one of them cracks in the cold. Down there has the same line running through it. I'd spent a year treating the inside of my cheek and wondering why my lips were still bleeding. ======== Here's the rest of it, in her words as near as I can manage. Skin has a thin outer layer whose whole job is holding water in. That layer is made of a fat. Your body makes the fat. Estrogen is what tells it to. When estrogen drops, the order stops going in. The layer gets thin. Water gets out. And the nerves that used to sit under something with some thickness to it are suddenly under something with almost none. A seam. A waistband. Wool. Sitting down. Your brain gets all of that and files it under one word. That skin down there listens to estrogen harder than almost anywhere else on you. So it's the first to notice when the signal goes quiet, and it notices loudest. Then she went through my year like she'd been in the room for it. The week before your period. That's estrogen at its lowest. The layer's at its thinnest, so it's at its loudest. Then your period comes, estrogen lifts a little, and it goes quiet. That's not what an infection does. That's what skin does. The swabs came back clean because a swab looks for something living. This is something missing. And the week of relief after every cream. That was the cream. Not the medicine in it. The grease. You put something thick on thin skin and it feels better for a week, then the grease wears off and the skin is exactly as thin as it was, and you go and buy the next box. Six boxes. One shortage. And the word yeast was the only reason my crotch and my shins never got to be the same problem. ======== So that's why. The one-day cream. Nothing to kill. The pill. Nothing to kill, from the inside. The suppositories. Wrong tissue, and nothing there either. The cream from my doctor. Right tissue. The other one. The cotton underwear, the new detergent, the fragrance-free everything. Fixes for a problem I didn't have. And the searching. Every night I typed my symptom and my word into a box, and it gave me my word back. I wasn't searching. I was checking. If you're already taking fish oil for your skin, Bev had a line for that too. Good fat. Different job. The fat this layer is built from is a specific one, and omega-3 isn't it. ======== What she takes is Bloom & Bond. I'd never heard of it. I'd have walked straight past it. It's pumpkin seed oil, and here's why that isn't as daft as it sounds. Pumpkin seed oil is about half linoleic acid. That's the name of the fat. The exact one the outer layer is built from. Bev said there's almost nothing else you can swallow that's this concentrated in it. But heat wrecks that fat, and most pumpkin seed oil on Amazon is heat-processed, which means you're paying for the fat and getting the damage. Bloom & Bond is cold-pressed. 2,000mg. That's the whole reason to be fussy about the brand. There's saw palmetto in it too, for skin comfort while the layer rebuilds. Fine. But the linoleic acid is the point. No collagen, no biotin, no filler with a nice name. Two softgels with breakfast. That's it. trybloomandbond.com/pages/6-reasons-bloom-bond ======== Bev was straight with me about the pace, so I'll be straight with you. Weeks two to four, nothing. Nothing at all. She'd told me this is where women stop, so I didn't. Somewhere in week six I opened the drawer for the inside cream and saw the seventh box. Still sealed. I hadn't reached for it. I hadn't noticed not reaching for it. Week eight, we watched a whole film. I only know because he said, at the credits, "You didn't get up." Month three, I moved back into the middle of the bed. He didn't say anything about that one. He just moved over. Skin is slow. Some women notice sooner, some later. Nobody who's telling you the truth gives you a week. ======== Last Sunday I stood in the communion line with my hands at my sides. Wool skirt. Same one. Back in the pew he didn't say anything, because there was nothing to say. He read the hymn sheet. I read it with him. On the walk home I told him it was never that. Not once. Fourteen months and six boxes and it was never that. He said, "I know. I never thought it was." I knew what it was. I'd had it before. Except I hadn't. The tests were right, all three times. I was wrong about the word. ======== So here's what I'd want you to picture, if you're standing where I was. A service where your hands stay where you put them. A film, start to credits, without the water excuse. A pharmacist who doesn't know your face. A drawer with one thing in it, not seven. The middle of the bed. None of that is a promise. It's just what skin does when it stops running short of what it's made of. ======== If you're somewhere in perimenopause and you've got a word for what's going on down there. If the word is yeast, and the tests keep saying it isn't. If it's the outside, the part with hair, and it itches rather than burns. If your shins are doing it too, and your ears, and you've filed those under winter. If you're on a cream for the inside and half of you got better. If you're on box four, or five, or six. Then hear the thing a nurse said to me at a sink, because nobody with a prescription pad ever did. Infections stay where they are. Skin doesn't. And every box you buy from here buys you a week of grease and a month you didn't spend on the actual problem. The tests were right. I was wrong about the word. Bloom & Bond. Cold-pressed pumpkin seed oil, 2,000mg, saw palmetto, two softgels with breakfast, and 90 days to send it back if your skin doesn't feel any different. trybloomandbond.com/pages/6-reasons-bloom-bond Stop treating the word. ======== P.S. Box seven is still in the drawer. Sealed. I keep it there on purpose.