by Hazel Anna Rogers for this Carl Kruse Blog
I remember when my mama started her menopause. I remember it because I remember the little fan that my dad bought her that she could carry around for when she had a hot flush out and about, and the big fan he bought that stood beside the sofa blasting cool air at her while we were watching a film. I remember watching her strip down to her bra and I remember touching her back and it feeling hot and damp under my palm. I remember all the bottles of herbal supplements that she tried in the hope of making the hot flushes go away, and I remember that none of them worked.
Menopause isn’t spoken about very much. I never heard about it in school, and I never heard anyone talk about it until my mama did. I don’t really know what it is, I just know that it’s coming for me. It’s a bit like your period. You hear things about it, and you learn about how it works biologically in school, but that’s it really. I had a friend who was desperate for her period to come. She kept talking about it.
Then your period comes, and it’s this pain deep in your abdomen that makes you feel heavy and round. I remember when mine started because I’d been picking cherries on the way home from school with my best friend and when I got home it was there. And for the rest of my life, until menopause, I would experience pain. And I would have to pay for it.
It seems nonsensical that something almost all women and people with FRO go through must be paid for. But being a woman is expensive. And HRT (Hormone Replacement Therapy), which is at present the most effective treatment for menopause symptoms, is also not free. In 2023, Imperial College London reported that only 2% of medical research funding was conducted on pregnancy, childbirth, and female reproductive health, despite one in three women reporting a reproductive or gynaecological health problem. There is a cloud of unknowing that lingers over the heads of women and people with female reproductive organs (FRO), and one of the most misunderstood changes that we undergo during our lives is menopause.
I am not a scientist. I am very interested in science, but I can’t speak with much assuredness on a topic that, for one, remains poorly researched, and two, that I have not yet experienced. There are good resources out there on BBC’s Women’s Hour and the NHS website, and a few decent peer-reviewed articles on Google Scholar, but I am not writing this article to present limited scientific research. This article is about listening to people’s experiences. Menopause, despite its well-documented hardships, is something that women and people with FRO must endure while continuing to work, be loving parents and doting partners. But it is also is a new life stage, and to some a very positive change; menopause represents the freedom of no longer having a period, no longer being chained to a monthly cycle.
My hope is that you might read this and talk to women and people with FRO and listen to their experiences. Because that has always been the problem, hasn’t it? That no one really listens.
I called my mama a few days ago and asked whether I could ask her a few questions about menopause. She agreed, and spoke to me while she ate her breakfast.
When did you first realise you were menopausal? How did you know?
I suspected when I was 46 because I had very strange things happen at night. My legs were really really hot. Only my legs – and only at night. So I went to the doctors and they did tests and they said I wasn’t menopausal or premenopausal.
And then, not very long after – the next year – I started having hot flushes. To start with, there were not very many, but they were very strong, and I started investigating remedies that were on the market which were very expensive. I tried so many things.
Eventually, the black cohosh, which I bought at Boots, actually worked. Or my symptoms got sparse again, I don’t know. I didn’t have hot flushes for about 6 months with that product.
And then they restarted. And they were very random, sometimes triggered by anything that was stressful. That lasted for a long, long time. I tried to cope with them for as long as I could. I was lucky because I didn’t really have any other symptoms apart from joint pain, but no mood changes or anything like that. And then eventually it got too much because at night I would have up to 4 really bad hot flushes and I couldn’t sleep through the night, so I went to the doctor’s and got a really nice young female doctor and she gave me all the literature that was available at the NHS concerning menopause and then, because she knew I didn’t want much medical intervention, she started me on the lowest dose of hormone patches, and that has worked for me since then.
BUT after being on them for around 2 years, I tried to cut them in half to see if I could wean myself off. Within a week, they were back. Recently, I’ve heard that for quite a few women, hot flushes last right until the end of your life. I hate that. I really hope it’s not the case. Because they work, but they can at times strongly irritate the skin, and they can come off. And you have to pay for them. You can buy a yearly menopause prescription cover – around £24 [GBP] for the year – and with that I don’t have to pay for them every time, so that’s good. If I didn’t have that, it would cost £9 every time I went to fetch them. You get boxes containing 4 patches. It’s called estradiol [FemSeven Conti: each patch contains 1.5mg of estradiol hemihydrate and 0.525mg of levonorgestrel, releasing 50 micrograms of estradiol and 7 micrograms of levonorgestrel per 24 hours].
Did you know anything about menopause before you experienced it yourself? Did you hear any stories/know anyone who’d experienced it?
I tried to find out from my mum, but my mum had to have a hysterectomy after giving birth to my sister, so we don’t know what kind of menopause she would have had. My husband’s mum had a very short and intense menopause, and she had a breakdown during that time, which could be linked to menopause. We don’t know. I saw it happen to other women who I worked with first. Horrendous hot flushes – they had to change their clothes when it happened, and their faces went bright red. I was lucky I didn’t have that when mine started. I also heard from a friend about her friend, a woman who lived near to school, that when she started her menopause, she had extremely violent impulses. The first time it happened, she was eating breakfast with her husband, and she told him he had to leave the room or she was going to kill him. She said she had quite a few very very violent impulses.
How did menopause affect your life? Work, relationships, family? Physical changes?
It’s difficult to tell, because I went almost literally straight from having my coil taken out to starting with menopausal symptoms, like irregular periods (which I was expecting from the coil removal anyway), but the most striking change was the joint pain. I was aching all over my body for about three years. When I woke up in the morning I felt like an old lady because it was so painful everywhere.
I didn’t suffer from depression at any stage. I felt for a while like I was still having my period, because my breasts would get bigger, and all over my body I would bloat, and I would get spots on my face even though no period was there.
How do you feel about yourself now? Has menopause changed your perception of yourself?
No – I’ve had fluctuation in my weight for quite a long time. I feel much better from doing sports, definitely, and trying not to eat too much sugar. I think we probably have a better diet than we used to, so that has probably influenced how I feel too. Generally being more active has helped a lot.
What do you wish you could have known before menopause? What would you say to help a premenopausal person?
One thing I would definitely do differently – I was on the pill from the age of 13 until I came to England, and then I was on the coil, so I think I stayed too long on prescribed contraception with hormones in, and I think probably that messed up my whole system.
I’m 57 – I’ve been menopausal for about 11 years. I mean …probably the main thing I would say is that, if you’re in a couple and you know you don’t want kids [or any more kids], I’d suggest for the guy to have surgery [referring to a reversible vasectomy] rather than the woman be on hormones for years.
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I thanked my mother, and hung up on the call. A few minutes later, I received an email from her – she’d sent my questions over to one of her close friends, an American woman whose children used to babysit me and my siblings when we were little. She is also a marvellous baker.
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When did you first realise you were menopausal? How did you know?
My period stopped at 50. I had about 3 hot flushes in the first year, which coincided with my MS diagnosis.
Did you know anything about menopause before you experienced it yourself? Did you hear any stories/know anyone who’d experienced it?
I did know about menopause from reading about it. I didn’t know from others as I was the oldest of my peers to go through it. I heard stories from other women much later.
How did menopause affect your life? Work, relationships, family? Physical changes?
Physically I don’t know of any changes I experienced. I felt big changes on reaching 70 but also as a result of MS.
How do you feel about yourself now? Has menopause changed your perception of yourself?
I feel happier in myself now – I still have work and have a fulfilling life. I do struggle a bit with my weight.
What do you wish you could have known before menopause? What would you say to help a premenopausal person?
I can’t give any advice really because my menopause was overshadowed by MS. Fortunately there’s no genetic link to MS, only predisposition.
I am a woman of the feminist generation, and we embrace menopause as a natural progression. In some cultures, menopause signals a newfound sense of self and a newly found respect for oneself.
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The next day, my mama sent me another email. This time, the woman responding was a close friend she’d known for over thirty years. We still have a sculpture that she made in the living room of the house where I grew up.
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When did you first realise you were menopausal? How did you know?
3 years ago, some symptoms were joint aches and irregular hot flushes. I had several minor ones a week.
Did you know anything about menopause before you experienced it yourself? Did you hear any stories/know anyone who’d experienced it?
Yes – I knew a lot about menopause, but at the time I thought it might be stress and depression, which I also suffer with.
How did menopause affect your life? Work, relationships, family? Physical changes?
It did affect me, but I thought it was just ill health. I felt like it affected all areas of my life, and my doctors also just presumed it was depression and didn’t really listen to me.
Physically I put on weight, lost flexibility, had changes in my skin, experienced hair loss, and had a lot of physical and mental fatigue.
How do you feel about yourself now? Has menopause changed your perception of yourself?
Now I feel totally different, I take an oestrogen gel and a progesterone tablet and eat a sugar free diet. Menopause definitely changed my perception of myself.
What do you wish you could have known before menopause? What would you say to help a premenopausal person?
I wish I could have known how much impact hormones have on me, as it seems I have always been extremely reactive to hormones. I also wish doctors had believed me and listened, because I already knew what was wrong with me but I wasn’t taken seriously. I was always wrongly labelled and prescribed. Many doctors saw me as a hypochondriac.
To help I would say trust listening to your body, and ask to be sent to specialist clinics.
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The last person I received responses from was the mother of one of my childhood best friends. She wrote an article herself on the topic which she sent over.
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When did you first realise you were menopausal? How did you know?
My periods stopped when I was 50. I suffered a range of menopausal symptoms including hot flushes, insomnia, brain fog, and anxiety leading to periods of depression. In the 5 years following the stopping of my periods, each winter season become worse year on year. It’s not that I hadn’t suffered some of these symptoms before, but I now realise that I could have been affected by the peri-menopause for a good while before this milestone.
How did menopause affect your life? Work, relationships, family? Physical changes?
A feeling of constant anxiety overshadowed everything I did and increasingly this spiralled down into depression. I am a qualified yoga teacher, so I have all sorts of mindful, meditative, and breathing practices at my disposal. Much to my frustration, these did not prove enough to prevent or relieve the worst of the symptoms, although I guess they did help me to survive them.
Like so many others, I had acquired the mindset that taking HRT should only be done as a last result, and that beginning HRT was some kind of failure. This was certainly the attitude that my GP actively concurred with, saying we should eliminate everything else before considering HRT. I had blood tests to check for every kind of deficiency, except estrogen of course. It was also suggested my anxiety and depression might be a result of certain life changes, such as the children starting to leave home. Basically suggesting it was a case of me not coping with the emotional turmoil of this stage of life.
What do you wish you could have known before menopause? What would you say to help a premenopausal person?
Within a couple of days of taking HRT my minor physically symptoms had cleared, and during the winter season after I started taking it I remained my positive, calm, anxiety-free self, Christmas included, of which I enjoyed every moment.
After some digging, I did manage to find a small amount of information online linking Seasonally Affected Disorder (SAD) and menopause, exploring the effect of seasonal changes on hormone levels, or the body’s response to low estrogen, but there is very little and it does suggest that more research is required.
The sad thing is, I ended up having my worst ever period of depression the following winter, after writing the article [the above responses are quoted from Sal‘s article], during which I felt particularly helpless as I was already on HRT and thought I’d found the solution. Getting onto a different HRT so I could increase the dose took much too long, for many reasons, but in the end I somehow survived and eventually recovered.
I have a much better set up now so I have capacity to increase my estrogen if and when needed, just keeping a low dose going while I’m feeling fine, which has been over a year now. Two good winters would be amazing and I am ever hopeful that those very dark days are well and try behind me for good.
I felt it was really important to share my experience so was honest with people at work – both my male and female colleagues. I only felt able to do this when I was out of the bad stuff though and still find it hard to know how best to help people who are in the midst of it.
If I could go back in time I think I would show myself this video…
https://youtu.be/FPIkWbzEWFg?si=Ssh6HR0P3Y0LRBFl
Hearing Meg Matthews describe her experience resonated so much and I think is what really helped the penny drop for me.
So much unnecessary suffering for me – it could have been resolved so much sooner (but hey ho, part of life’s rich tapestry) but also for so many before me and no doubt still. It is so crucial that we keep talking about it.
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I finished writing up the last interview, then took my hands off my keyboard and looked out of the window. It was raining. Time moves so fast sometimes. This year feels as though it has moved at tremendous speed.
Sometimes, I look at women in the street, women ten, twenty, thirty years older than me, and I wonder how it is that they got there. It feels, at times, like I will be young forever. Did they all feel like that at one point? What do they think when they look at me?
One day, I will have my last period, and I, too, will be menopausal. Maybe I’ll look back on this article when that happens, and maybe things will have changed. Maybe we’ll know more, maybe more studies will have been undertaken, maybe it will have become more commonplace for men to get vasectomies rather than women taking hormonal pills.
Who knows. For now, I look out of the window at the rain and I think about my life and what is to come.
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This Carl Kruse Blog Homepage is at https://carlkruse.at
Contact: carl AT carlkruse DOT com
Other articles by Hazel include: Shojin Ryori, Mars One and Single Mums.
Also find Carl Kruse on Fstoppers and on Carl Kruse Goodreads Page.
