Hot flashes anyone?

When I decided to have surgery, I knew my body would go into menopause. I was fine with it since I had kind of gone through that after chemo. My body would have these heat waves that come and go and feel really intense. I thought they were bad. Uh, I was wrong.

A true hot flash is miserable. It especially sucks while it is summer time and the hottest time of the year. After surgery, they didn't start immediately but it came on slowly after a couple of weeks. They start deep in my "core" or chest area and slowly radiate outward. It feels like you are in the grips of a bad fever. Every inch of your body is hot. Then, every inch of your body feels like you are dripping with sweat. Most of the time it is when they come on.

I've changed my meds to Effexor to help cope with these hot flashes. I'm not sure it's working. I literally feel like I'm drenched in sweat. Just sitting down in the evenings, with the slightest bit of pressure from my clothes, and I get a hot flash. I don't like to cuddle in the evenings, because the body heat from someone sets them off too. As I sit here typing this, I'm getting over a hot flash. It was bad. Nearly every inch of me is covered in sweat. It even feels like my hair is sweating it's so bad. One night when we had super hot weather, I was nearly in tears I was so hot and couldn't get any relief. I'm not ready to call the doctor though. I'm not sure if the meds have kicked in yet, if it's the combo of the summer heat and hot flashes, or what it is. I have to see my gyno surgeon in about a month of so, and if it doesn't get any worse, I'll wait until then to mention it. But if this continues, I'm gonna need to be talked down from climbing out of my skin.

I'm all for any great homeopathic ideas of making this go away. Unfortunately, everything I've seen so far has an estrogen based idea for making it better. I can't have that unfortunately. GGGGGRRRRRRR!!!!!!