Mageau finally understood what all the menopause fuss was about. "Imagine someone lighting a little flame at the bottom of your leg and suddenly turning up the gas all the way," she says. "People hear about menopause and they think, 'So what? You feel a little warm.' They have no idea."

On the recommendation of friends who caught her fanning herself at a party, Mageau picked up a bottle of black cohosh, an herb marketed as an alternative remedy to the conventional -- and controversial -- hormone therapy of estrogen (or a combination of estrogen and progesterone). Like all menopausal medications, black cohosh and other alternative remedies don't claim to "cure" menopause, just to relieve symptoms like hot flashes, vaginal dryness and headaches. None of it has worked yet, but Mageau hasn't given up hope -- "it's only been a couple of months," she says -- and as long as they're not possibly cancer-causing hormones, she's open to other solutions. "Unless it sounds completely wacky, I'll do anything," Mageau says. "If somebody told me to add a drop of iodine to my water in the morning, I'd do it."

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