Hot flushes save on the heating bill....

I think I'm menopausal. Is that a word?
Every evening, I sit here at my desk and I'm putting on a sweater because I'm cold and then taking it off because I'm too hot. It's a sudden change, not a gradual heating up. It's like someone turned up the heat, but only in the space I'm in. The only way to explain it really is like a flush of sudden heat. It's October, and the wind is freezing, even when the sun is warm, but I feel like it's August inside.
I'm waking through the night, too hot, throwing the covers off. Then waking again because I'm too cold. I can't get it right, and it feels like being ill. I'm getting more headaches too, but I wonder if that's due to something else. It might be the menopause hormone changes, I used to get a headache once a month but I haven't had a period since July. That isn't odd in itself though. A few years ago I had an endometrial ablation, which left me with little, or no, endometrium while leaving the uterus intact and in place. It worked well, and I've had trouble free cycles ever since, until recently when they went all erratic again - but not flooding like Niagara.
And now they seem to have stopped, and the hot flushes have started.
I'm 44. It's roughly on time. I've been expecting it for a few years, and I'm actually surprised it's taken this long to turn up. I'm not sure what other signs to expect now, I refuse to call them symptoms - that implies it's an illness, it's not. It's just a stage of life, like puberty, like losing milk teeth. So far, it's all very mild and manageable, if annoying at times.
The kids, and cats, don't seem too bothered that I've turned the heating so far down that it rarely even comes on, so I'll leave it as it is for now. It saves on the gas bill anyway!