Welcome to my menopause nightmare: She's wrinkling like a prune, sweating like a bull - and going to bed with a man has never been so scary! A brutally honest yet life-affirming account of the menopause.

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Welcome to my menopause: Mandy is experiencing some hair-thinning and enduring severe night sweats

Strange things are happening to me in the night. It used to be one night every so often, but now it's every night.
I go to bed looking like the normal me, straight-haired and smoothish-faced, but I wake up (note: I haven't actually slept for more than about four hours so I use the term loosely) looking as if I'm wearing a fright wig and with my face so puffy that I look as though I've been fighting ten rounds with a man with large fists.
Night sweats are to blame. Each night I toss and turn, my hair wet with sweat before being tumble-dried in a tangle of sheets and pillows. Come 8am, I look like one of the Jackson Five.
All this started about a year ago. Where I used to read for 30 minutes, switch off the light and wake up eight hours later feeling thoroughly refreshed, bedtime is now a marathon of insomnia and discomfort which leaves me feeling as if I never actually sleep.
Welcome to my menopause.
When, about two years ago, my doctor told me I was peri-menopausal, I ran home to consult my Family Health Encyclopaedia and blanched  as I read the common symptoms  of menopause.
Hot flushes and night sweats; loss of libido (sexual desire); vaginal dryness and pain, itching or discomfort during sex; palpitations; headaches; mood changes such as depression, anxiety or tiredness; sleeping problems including insomnia; urinary tract infections.
Oh joy! Here I am, 53 years old, wrinkling faster than a plum in the sun, hair thinning, more life behind me than in front of me - and now a fresh hell of decline to anticipate.
When my menopause started, I was single and wondering whether I would ever have sex again. Even if I were lucky enough to meet a needle in life's haystack at this 11th hour, I questioned whether I could bear to be seen naked by a man now that I am sagging, receding and creasing.
More to the point, assuming that this man were my age or thereabouts, how would I feel when confronted with the balding, bloated, varicosed reality of sex after 50?
Then I started seeing Adam, who is not balding, bloated nor varicosed. Since he's the same age as me and has known me for about 30 years, I suppose he realised he was turning up at the party just as the drink ran out - but, happily, that hasn't got in our way.

 

Still, things in the bedroom have become a little trickier. Sliding around in sweat-soaked sheets when I am alone in bed is nasty enough. When Adam's in there with me, there is something even more mortifying about the bird's nest hair, the puffy face and sweating like a bull.
Plus, having another human being and an extra 98.6 degrees of body heat in close proximity makes the bed feel like a steam bath.
We have to sleep with the windows and the curtains wide open. I've decided that I'll take my chances with any intruding burglar, badger or fox, for the sake of a cool draught.
But still I am too hot to sleep. Cue Kindle and a bucketload of envy as I watch Adam, body thermostat working perfectly, sound asleep beside me.

Insomnia marathon: The side-effects of Mandy's menopause keep her up at night (model pictured)

However, these problems are really just about the mechanics of sleep. Far more fundamental is the raft of sexual problems lying in wait for the menopausal woman. I refer you to Numbers Two and Three on the earlier list: loss of sexual desire, and pain or discomfort during sex.
Some experts will put the fear of God into you, telling you the menopause is such a downhill ride of dried-up hormones that your sex life is basically a goner.
Even my friend Jeanette, who's a nurse, warned me: 'Prepare to shrivel like a prune in all areas.'
She's the same age as me but hit her menopause earlier. From 2009 to 2011, she mostly sat, beetroot-red, in her sitting room, too hot to move out of the blast from the Dyson fan in front of her.
I'm hoping I'll be one of the lucky ones identified by sexual health educator Dr Elizabeth Boskey,  who says: 'The best predictor of  having a good sex life after  menopause is having a good sex life before menopause.
'Women who are happy with their pre-menopausal sex life are a lot more likely to be able to maintain that satisfaction post menopause.'
Right now, I'm happy to say my libido is healthy. I admit I live in mild fear of it going up in smoke like a magician's assistant, but so far, so good. Nonetheless, there are some other significant physical changes going on for me.

'Some experts will put the fear of God into you, telling you the menopause is such a downhill ride of dried-up hormones that your sex life is basically a goner.'

When Adam stays over, I make sure my make-up is strategically placed in the bathroom so that, before he's even awake, I can pop to the loo and slather on what's needed, this side of 50, so as not to look like a dying old crone in a Dickens novel. 
I felt guilty one morning last week when he told me how girlish and young I looked without make-up. 'In fact, I prefer you without it,' he said.
Of course, I accepted Adam's compliment gracefully, not having the heart to tell him that my 'no make-up look' was achieved by lashings of foundation, concealer, illuminator, highlighter, blusher and mascara, applied while he was still in the Land of Nod.
I call these my Blanche Dubois moments, after the ageing southern belle in Tennessee Williams' play A Streetcar Named Desire, who drapes lamps with chiffon scarves to dim the light so people can't see how old she is.
I confide my insecurities in Adam and he reassures me he loves me exactly as I am. Then he pinches his middle-aged spread or bemoans the fact he has to get up for a wee in the night at least three times, and we're able to laugh at our respective indignities.
Sex is a common topic when my friends and I get together. Joanne confides that she's bucking the midlife trend for fleece and The One Show, embracing a whole new post-menopausal chapter in her sex life when she and her husband don't have to worry about contraception, periods or children with listening ears in close proximity.
I do worry about contraception, knowing two women who ended up pregnant at 50 without meaning to. A long chat with my GP has resulted in my going back on the contraceptive pill for the first time in about two decades.
Another friend, who must remain nameless, says she wishes she needed contraception - but her once-healthy physical relationship with her husband of 20 years has hit the menopausal buffers.
'I just don't want sex any more,' she admits. 'And if we do go there, it hurts.'

Oh joy! Mandy has more life behind her than in front of her - and now, as the menopause ramps up, she has a fresh hell of decline to anticipate

See a doctor! Buy some KY Jelly, we suggest.
'Where? How? Can I buy it online so I don't have to die a thousands deaths in Boots?
'Anyway, I hate the way I look, which does nothing for my sex drive,' she adds. 'Thanks to the menopause, I've lost what waist I once had, I'm about two stone heavier and I'm the consistency of quiche.'
My friend jokes that she's been the victim of 'The Menopause Thief': he's taken her figure, quite a bit of her hair, her sex drive, and what she describes as 'my sense of myself as a woman'. I know what she means. He's taken quite a few bits of  me, too.
Even my hairdresser broached the subject of my rapidly thinning hair last time I saw her - so, in panic, I dashed out and bought myself a £15 hairpiece which, I fear, makes me look like a cheerleader from behind and the Wicked Witch of the West from the front.
Apparently my friend's sexual problems are not unusual. 'When oestrogen is low, women may notice dryness, which can lead to painful sex,' says author and gynaecologist Dr Hilda Hutcherson. 'Some women will begin to have symptoms of decreasing oestrogen in their  mid-to-late 30s or early 40s. The first sexual complaint is often painful sex due to dryness.'
Dryness occurs in up to half of all postmenopausal women, while about one-third of postmenopausal women suffer from pain during sex.

'My friend jokes that she's been the victim of 'The Menopause Thief': he's taken her figure, quite a bit of her hair, her sex drive, and what she describes as 'my sense of myself as a woman'.'

Apparently the most common reason for lack of libido is boredom - not a problem I suffer from right now, perhaps because I have a relatively new partner, but one I have experienced in the past.
'Women simply become bored with their sex lives after a time with the same partner: same time, same place, same position - sex becomes routine,' Dr Hutcherson says.
Not if we don't let it, though. It takes a little more work in midlife to keep it fresh, but I'm up to the challenge - and happy to have met a man who is, too.
If Adam were years younger than me, I know my insecurities would be magnified a thousand times. As it is, we're two middle-agers who can see the funny side of being 50-plus.
The menopause is about much more than sex, and I am relieved that my friends and I can talk about it openly. As we say goodbye to our fertility and hello to life beyond it, we are battling through a difficult life stage which is, variously, the butt of the world's jokes, a slightly embarrassing secret or a source of sadness.
But there has to be a fourth way, an approach which leaves every woman forging new beginnings as well as bidding goodbyes.
Join me on my journey in a new occasional column, where I'll be charting my personal highs and lows and saying the things women think and feel about the menopause but so rarely share . . .

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