Menopause (231/365)

[white_hart]

Over on Facebook, I have been asking people about their experiences of menopause, after reading this Guardian article about menopausal women being forced out of work, and also seeing something about a campaign to make menopause a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

I have had a very easy menopause. My cycles became less and less predictable over a few years; some were very short, which was annoying, and while my periods were generally shorter than they used to be the first day or so was often heavy, but there were only a few occasions when I had real flooding. Hot flushes have been rather annoying (and I'm not sure how the constant cardigan-off-cardigan-on comes across to other people) but no more than that; the nighttime ones took more getting used to, but eventually I got to a stage where I'm only half waking up most of the time, and am able to manage OK with the interrupted sleep. I certainly don't have any more depression, anxiety or brain fog than I always did (and much less depression than when I was on Cerazette).

From the comments on my Facebook post, it's clear that I've been lucky in this, and friends have had a much worse time of it. I'm glad that there is more conversation, and more awareness; I hope that this will lead to GPs taking menopause symptoms more seriously, and employers offering more support. I also wonder, though, how I'd have felt if I'd read all of these things ten years ago. What if I'd gone into my forties expecting menopause to be horrendous, instead of just thinking that I'd be glad to be done with periods?

Comments

[sartorias]

55 when I finally stopped having periods. The hot flashes set in right away, and I still have them, but not every ten minutes, soaking all the way through my clothes, the way I did when they were at their worst, along years 6-9 of the fifteen years. Hair thinned, and it's very hard to shake off excess poundage that I don't want driving my blood pressure up--another bit of fallout. Also, for the first time in my life, I got UTIs. Doc said that's extremely common for post-menopausal women.

[white_hart]

My hot flushes can be quite frequent, but I normally manage to cool down by removing all removable layers of clothing, opening windows, switching fans on, etc. It's becoming very clear that I did have an extremely easy time of it, though.

[cmcmck]

Being on hrt means no problems, but when I had to come off prior to surgery in my early twenties, menopause hit me like a train.

It was only six weeks before and six weeks after, but what a grim experience!

[white_hart]

I can imagine that a very sudden menopause like that would be much worse than having it happen gradually!

[chiasmata]

I’ve been put into chemical menopause twice as symptom relief for endometriosis. I guess the main thing I took from it is to look after my mental health as I get closer to natural menopause, because menopause when I was mentally healthy was a lot easier than menopause when I was not! Oh, and the change to needing a richer facial moisturiser was quite startling.

Which is to say, I’m glad to hear yours has been easy :)

[mountainkiss]

I am also really glad that yours has been easy. It really feels like you deserve to be dealt an easy biochemical hand in something for once.

[white_hart]

I suspect that I have benefitted from thirty-odd years of managing chronic depression and anxiety by the time I became perimenopausal, as I had a full arsenal of tactics at my disposal. But mine clearly has been easy, and I am very glad of that!

[girlyswot]

One thing I do wish more people knew about is not to dismiss a post-menopausal bleed as just a late period. You should go and see GP immediately to be checked for uterine, cervical or vaginal cancer.

[white_hart]

Yes - I didn't know about this until last year, when a colleague was referred for urgent testing after having post-menopausal bleeding (fortunately, it was negative), but it is really important to know about.

[alithea]

Yes, a friend of mine is currently going through this and is likely to need surgery - not something to ignore

[mountainkiss]

This is really interesting. I think about it a lot.

I'm 49 and likely to be in or approaching perimenopause. I don't think my cycle frequency has changed, but since I had a copper coil fitted (April 2013) it's been very hard to map, so I could be wrong about this.

I am really, really glad to know about the range of symptoms that women can suffer. It's helped me to prepare myself psychologically for this trip into the unknown. The prospect is frightening for me. I know women who have been liberated by it and women who have been unaffected by it and women who have been scourged. I do not fear the most conventional symptoms - I've been living with a massively oversensitive temperature gauge since my 20s (overactive hypothalamus; trauma symptom) and have constant brain fog. I am terrified of losing my sex drive, which feels to me like losing a limb. I know this is a lot less relevant and important for most women but it is important to me.

I've found the knowledge helpful in looking forward to how I will cope. It helps me to keep my diet healthier. It makes me very thoughtful about supplementation, about trying to build sustainable exercise routines, about psychological support, about whether / when how I will talk about this with other people. I am glad to have the time and space to compost this.

The main thing it's done is started me thinking very early about HRT. I'm incredibly grateful for this. It is a complex issue. I think it must be really hard for women who are catapulted into this decision-making at short notice when their symptoms are acute, probably with a doctor who has a strong view (positive or negative) that is not necessarily backed up by deep expertise. This allows me to do my own research, judge the risks and benefits accordingly and be prepared when the time comes.

Thank you for posting this. It is very clear that it is a much-silenced topic and I do think it's really good that this is starting to change.

[white_hart]

I think it's definitely good that there is more information out there. I always looked on the prospect of menopause as a liberation - I have no idea whether that positive attitude contributed to finding it relatively easy, though I suspect it may have done, at least in terms of response to a middle-ground kind of menopause. I'm sure it's much easier to cheerfully endure hot flushes when they're a sign of something you want!

I don't think I ever really had a sex drive to lose, so I can't comment on that :-)

It's definitely good that there is more discussion and more information, and that people are able to think about it in advance.

[mountainkiss]

Yes and I was trying really hard to signal that I think this is completely individual both in terms of people's levels of sex drive and how they relate to it. I really really do not want to be normative about this. For me it is archetypal and identity-level, but I would hate to inadvertently sound as if I think it should be for anyone else. I know women who have been sexually passionate in earlier life and are now completely happy to leave it behind, and women for whom it's always been a problem and women for whom it's always been non-existent or unimportant and women for whom menopause has supercharged their sexuality and given them a new lease of life. I think it is vanishingly hard and also usually damaging to generalise about this stuff.

[muninnhuginn]

Thank you for posting this! I do think we ought to talk about the menopause more--both the good and bad aspects of it. I worry that the media coverage tends to talk about the problematic side (which is undoubtedly the experience of many) of things and not the positives--and the the mundane day-to-day getting on with life during the process.

I didn't read up on it (have done since). I did look forward to it (I dreaded the thought of beginning to menustruate). For me, it happened as I went back into the workplace having spent 15 years doing the stay-at-home parent thing and working my way through Fibromyalgia. Without the postive experience of the menopause, I wouldn't have coped. Energy, after so many years of exhaustion, made all the difference.

The other great thing is having several menopausal colleagues who are equally open about it. (This, I guess, is somewhat unusual in a hi-tech business.)

[white_hart]

Thank you for this - I agree that while it's really good that there is more discussion and media coverage, the focus on the negatives is less good, and it's great to hear from people who have had a positive experience!

[hilarita]

I mean, it's good to have high quality information. So, e.g. % of people who have problem with hot flushes etc. and who are bothered enough to seek medical support. And to help normalise being able to adjust your working environment so you can cope with the hot flush or whatever.

I have no idea how this is going to pan out. My current pill suppresses my periods entirely, which is absolutely fantastic, and I hope this smooths my path into menopause. I do worry a little, because my mother is still having trouble with hot flushes, 13 years after going off menopausal HRT. I don't really fancy 13 years of hot flushes!

[white_hart]

I am probably fortunate to work in a building that is old enough to have opening windows, making it fairly easy to control the temperature in my office. And I have spent a lot of time banging on about windows in our new building, both because of the importance of daylight for mental health and the need for menopausal people to control the temperature.

[hilarita]

Turns out actual opening windows also good for limiting the spread of covid and other aerosol-borne illnesses. Windows good all round, provided you can keep the sun off now that we regularly get 30+C in the summer...

[ironed_orchid]

Anecdata: I went off my pill to see if doing that would speed up menopause, and my hot flashes and night sweats reduced dramatically, which is the opposite of what my GP and I expected.

[ironed_orchid]

I've been experiencing some perimenopause symptoms, including hot flashes since I had an overay removed at the ripe old age of 37, and didn't even know that it was menopause related until a few years ago when I was doing a course with women who were a bit older than me. Right now I am at the irregular period phase, but I am not having night sweats anymore so it feels like I might be through the worst/

I'm a member of two gender neutral, fat positive peri/menopause support groups of FB, and they are actually really great for emoptional support, a safe space to vent, and for sharing information. (Both are private groups, but if you're interested send me a message here and I will share my FB details with you and send an invite)

[white_hart]

Fingers crossed the night sweats don't return!

The FB groups sound great - I think that I've had an untroubled enough time that I probably don't need them, but I'm really glad that such things exist.

[sfred]

I feel very lucky to have skipped it entirely (by going straight from not-even-slightly menopausal ovaries to no ovaries but full-on HRT, without passing go).