To feel awful for not realising that menopause is so brutal?!

[yayoikusama]

I'm 37, and I was just diagnosed with premature ovarian insufficiency – basically I'm in premature menopause. Not even peri-menopause; my hormone levels are what you'd expect from someone post-menopause.

I've been feeling horrendous for months. Truly thought I was losing my mind.

Exhausted down to my bones, taking long naps every day because I just can't keep going.

My brain doesn't feel like my own. I can't think in straight lines, can't concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes, sentences aren't coming out the way I want them to (and I write for a living so this is particularly painful).

I've been riding huge waves of sadness and anxiety (it doesn't help that the last two years have been really hard). My body is achy and tight. I feel like I'm living under a heavy cloud. And this is all completely aside from the 'premature' part of my diagnosis, which has pretty significant ramifications for my fertility.

I knew menopause sent you a bit emotionally haywire, and that you might forget words or have hot flushes, but I had no idea how utterly debilitating it could be.

And I'm completely shocked, now, that there are so many women out there battling daily life while feeling this way; that it's not made room for and explicitly supported in workplaces; that we're not treating it as the absolute earthquake that it can be.

It's made me realise the internalised misogyny I've been holding, because I feel shame about it and somehow less of a woman because I'm going through it early. Logically I know that's nonsense, but I can feel it bubbling.

I'm walking around looking at every woman I see, now, of usual menopausal age, doing normal things and holding everything together, and just wanting to give them a massive hug.

I know HRT can work wonders. And I know not everyone has such a brutal time of it, but I also know now that many of us do, and are just 'getting on with things' the way women are expected to, and it blows my mind.

If you've been through menopause, or you're in the thick of it now, did you feel prepared for what was coming? Did you know what it was really like, or did it shock you as much as it has me?

Edited to add: thought I was posting in AIBU – sorry for the weird thread title!

I wish I had been prepared for the hell that is menopause. My symptoms started around 40, I had no idea of course what was going on and battled though with exercise and healthy eating which may have helped for a while. Eventually I was suffering horrendously, and my G.P was no use at all merely offering antidepressants, which interestingly actually reduce oestrogen and testosterone, and blood tests (for everything but hormones!). I was 46 and begging for help. My quality of life was zero and I was in danger of loosing my job. Like many women I dealt with elderly parents and their deaths, closely followed by two nasty bouts of COVID..all of these may have had an extra impact on my hormones.. I read Davina's 'Menopausing' which led me down the path of private healthcare, I was lucky enough to afford this and continue to pay a private prescription for HRT. That was life changing, I'm a different person for sure but I'm healthy, fit and calm - HRT for life! Looking back I would have benefited from HRT in my early 40's, it would have saved me a few years of utter hell.

There's a reason that suicide rates peak in women in the 40s and 50s, it's brutal and can really mess with your mental health

im not meaning to be inflammatory but wanted to ask if your colleague is slim and apparently quite healthy? Only because I’ve heard anecdotally that excess weight can sometimes end up with worse symptoms? Not sure if it’s about weight or diet (sugar, refined carbs etc). I need to get on the exercise for sure, as I’ve heard this helps too

Ok I'll get checked out thanks

“I'm walking around looking at every woman I see, now, of usual menopausal age, doing normal things and holding everything together, and just wanting to give them a massive hug.”
Please don’t. you are suffering, and that is valid. I did not, and don’t want any “poor you”. I felt a bit hot occasionally, but otherwise fine.
Don’t over generalise, it doesn’t help anybody.
People who are suffering should get help. That doesn’t mean everyone us suffering

I agree with this. My sister is 49 and has had no issues, and my Mum always says she would never have known she was menopausal other then her periods eventually stopping, fingers crossed I’ll have the same.

I was slim, active, physically fit and ate very well and that didn't insulate me from the horrors. It can definitely help but it isn't a guarantee.

Obviously good to do whatever you can to be in the best place physically and mentally.

@yayoikusama it sucks as a diagnosis. I recieved the POI diagnosis at 23. In reality my blood work showed my hormone levels where out of whack from about 19 - my symptoms were always dismissed due to my age. I vividly remember having hot flushes in the last tears of secondary school.

For me HRT hasn't been a magic cure - I have always been told it isn't great for those with POI as own own hormone levels fluctuate more than those with menopause symptoms.

I am now 41, I spent many years in and out of doctors surgery & hospitals trying to improve my health. The night sweats, hot flushes, brain fog are all i have ever known! Not to mention having to come to terms with never having biological children.

About 5 years ago, I took control of my health. No more specialist! I do get an HRT prescription and I use this on and off for maybe 3/4 months at a time. I find it really affects my mental health when i'm on HRT so 4 months is all I can tolerate before I turn into a blubbering depressed wreck. Then I come off it over the next 3/4 months the symptoms gradually creep back in so I start again HRT. Whilst the doctor feels it's an unconventional approach they do acknowledge it works for me.

It is felt my symptoms will ramp up as I get older and I may at sum point need HRT at all times but I will weigh that up with my mental health when the time comes.

I also focused to keeping healthy generally, keeping weight off - which is a massive challenge and staying active. I have 2 wonderful non biological teens which keep me grounded.

Yes! I'm sitting here almost 55 with period cramps and my usual period headache. A brief and refreshing interlude before my peri symptoms return in force.. Yippee..

I hadn't a clue about menopause. I got to 52 without a symptom then the anxiety, emotionally instability and brain fog hit. I also started to have chronically dry eyes, digestive problems and fatigue. My GP was great and did a whole range of tests before putting me on HRT which was life changing. Then the HRT I was on went out of stock and here I am 5 months later back to square one.

I have a senior role and hide it at work. I fact I pretty much hide it full stop. I don't know anyone else in the same situation. I did cry down the phone to my female line manager one day and she said all the right things but I work for a small organisation and they don't have the resources to support me even if they wanted to.

I am now pinning my hopes on the third type of HRT. I do believe that exercise, diet and looking after your mental health is important and I do all of that, but this is tough.

I went through premature ovarian failure at 16 - it was brutal and I still don’t know how I got through it. There was so little information or support 20 years ago and I felt like an alien. Things are moving in the right direction with awareness about menopause. It’s not perfect but it’s refreshing to see conversations happening. I hope you find a way to manage the symptoms and don’t lose too much of yourself.

To be fair, there are some women who do sail through the whole menopause era without any symptoms and they are very lucky to do so. Others have occasional symptoms and manage those with lifestyle changes or supplements. Lucky them.

There are others - me included - who have had a much rougher ride. I won't bore you with the details but hysterectomy at 44, ovaries packed up 18 months to 2 years after that. I seriously thought I was developing dementia or serious mental health problems. Anxiety, insomnia and obsessive thoughts like I had never experienced before, inability to concentrate or propose a rational argument for anything, crying, temper, at the worst points, suicidal thoughts. Just horrendous. Two visits to the GP (middle aged, female GPs) who immediately reached for the prescription pad and fobbed me off with prozac. It was only after reading posts on forums and seeing more celebs talk about brain fog and mental health issues that the penny dropped and I started on HRT.

Menopause is far more than your periods stopping and the occasional hot flush. There have been so many more women talking about how it has affected them in recent years and that is hugely positive. There are some posters who will claim that it's all exaggerated, designed to scare women, sell them supplements, and that it's all nonsense anyway because they sailed through with some yoga and positive thinking. But I am very grateful for people speaking out and making it much less of a taboo.

It took me a while to realise my driving anxiety and dizziness was a perimenopausal symptom that has improved a little but still dictates where I can and can't go. I noticed that my mum always just accepts my anxiety as totally normal and says that one day it will be better. Five years in and I am still waiting. Doc still not keen for me to have hrt at age 48.

Make sure you get your vitamin D, vitamin B12, folate and iron including ferritin levels tested.

I was bone tired after having my daughter at 43 and it was low iron levels. Then my vitamin D levels screwed up as I had to change the supplement I took as the old one stopped being manufactured.

Role on 6 years later and if I have 2 months between my periods I am dog tired due to low oestrogen levels. Oh and I ache lots of the time. I had that when I had severe low vitamin D levels but this time it's different as it muscle rather than bone pain. Then there's eczema that's come back with a vengeance.

When mine really kicked in I started to see things that weren't there along with almost constant hot flushes. Apparently it can happen but it's not a common symptom. I was fucking miserable.... And a bit freaked. I'll never come off HRT I don't think if I can help it.

I don’t think any of us know what anything’s like until we’re in the thick of it. I feel bad now for all the things we expected of my mum when she had so much on (hysterectomy, dad having bypass and parents in ill health). It’s a reason I think a huge percentage of the mn aibus relating to gps or mils are things the op will go through themselves in the future!!

Hope it eases soon op

That’s good, I’ve not had too bad a time, just meant peri is just more of the same, hormones changing.

I also don't relate to the GP putting everything down to the menopause. In my case, it was anything BUT the menopause even though they could see on their records i'd had a hysterectomy which is a risk factor for your ovaries packing up more quickly.

It took me 3 failed visits when I was prescribed anti-depressants twice and folic acid (wtf?) once, before on the fourth visit I just kept parroting "I'd like to try HRT" until the GP gave in. That is not an uncommon story.

I could’ve written this word for word. Plus for me as other PPs have said, disastrously bad sleep.

I still don’t recognise myself, tbh.

Feel for @yayoikusama for having to go through this so early. Hope you can find what works for you and then have many future decades with the post-menopause ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude that PPs have described to power you through!

My brain doesn't feel like my own. I can't think in straight lines, can't concentrate on anything for more than 5 minutes, sentences aren't coming out the way I want them to (and I write for a living so this is particularly painful).

This is me too, peri kicked in with a vengeance this year at 49 and it's been awful. Even with decent HRT (had to ditch the NHS to get some that didn't make me worse), I still can only really write for two weeks of the month. On the progesterone fortnight all I can do is edit a bit and dredge up the minimum, which has never happened to me before. I'm so motivated and focused usually, and now is the first time i feel like retiring and doing FA, which I can't do ofc and don't want to because I know when I do come back to myself, I'll be gutted to have not done all the things I planned. But the menopausal shit in me just says "what's the point? why bother?" and even going for a walk feels like wading.

Also totally hear you on the mindfuck that women are having to go through this, while guys get yet another relatively even keel so their careers aren't impacted. I think of the male writers dominating my field, knocking work out no sweat and getting all the gigs, while I'm meant to do it with my hands tied behind my back and all the tiredness, rage, anxiety, distractedness and inability to even string a sentence together let alone pitch and write and everything else. Ugh, all I can offer you is solidarity (though I'm sorry you're facing it so shockingly early) and some hope you'll get the HRT help you need to stave off the worst of it.

I went to a menopause discussion at work and some of the women who reported some of the worse symptoms are slim and healthy.

I guess if you are lucky your mum would have told you at least some of her menopause symptoms.

I’m a doctor and perimenopausal and very much feeling it! It’s definitely made the job much harder for me. Not only do we have no air conditioning in the South East in summer in a building built to trap the heat so it can reach to about 40 degrees inside and hot flushes in that environment are no joke. But I feel cognitively slowed down compared to my normal and find myself having to check and recheck my work in a way I never used to need to do, to make sure I haven’t made some silly (but important) mistake or forgotten something crucial.

I am still managing the job ok, but I am less efficient than before, which is a huge problem as a GP where we have 10 minutes per patient. It’s very fast-paced and employers these days tend to prioritise speed in a GP much more than being a good clinician or having a good bedside manner etc which used to be more valued. I also struggle more to switch my brain between dealing with one issue to the next and I am firefighting and fielding loads of queries and issues all day as a GP, especially when I am the emergency doctor, so it’s really tough.

And then I come home and collapse in a heap and my house has basically gone to pot. So I feel like yes, many menopausal or perimenopausal women are holding down high powered jobs but it’s often at their own expense with negative impact on their personal lives, and with huge amounts of effort.

I do agree we don’t want to give the impression that women of this age can’t handle important jobs but I think there is space to recognise it may well be harder for us at this phase of life (it’s not everyone, I agree there are women out there who sail through menopause totally unscathed but my impression is that those people are in the minority rather than the majority), and some of us may need a little support. For my job for example that could look like 1. Installing some bloody air conditioning! 2. Allowing me to see slightly less patients per day (like 1 or 2 would make a huge difference) for a while in recognition that it’s taking me slightly longer than usual to work to the same standard 3. Receptionists really making an effort not to interrupt me unless it’s an actual emergency, hang on to their non-urgent queries until the end of clinic, and deal with simple admin issues themselves!

It cost me my marriage (or should I say, finally removed my blinkers?) which has it's ups, but has also made some aspects of life horrendously difficult. Almost too difficult tbh, what with the lack of clarity of thinking and general piss poor sleep etc.

A formerly close friend blithely said "oooh, lucky you, short periods and then no periods will be so great!" And now I can't be doing with her either haha, because, what a dickheaded and ill informed comment! The whole thing is awful and my body and mind is falling apart way early. I've lost friends because I'm just intolerant of other people's bullshit now. And it's hard. It's lonely. I feel you OP

I am the same age and mine started at the same age. My mum had passed away by the time I was 42, and in her era things like menopause weren’t discussed but I can look back and think there were times when she was clearly struggling.
HRT helped with the hot flushes for a few years but now they are back.
The one saving grace is that my periods ending helped my endometriosis. Which I had all my adult life, only diagnosed at 46, no treatment for it, it ruined my life in lots of ways. It still rears its head as it’s also in my bowel - also untreated.
I take my hat off to all women and I do feel for my mum’s generation who couldn’t discuss it and got told HRT would give them cancer.
The way women get treated within healthcare can still be abysmal.
When my endometriosis was really bad my GP told me having a baby would help. What type of bullshit advice that was!

It's brutal. Even on HRT I can't remember basic words half way through a sentence. I'm crap at quizzes because although I know the answer, it takes about 5 minutes to come to mind. The tiredness and weight gain is horrible.

Before I started HRT my joints were so stiff in the morning, it was difficult to get down the stairs. Magically healed after 3 months on patches.

I had no clue. I thought it was going to be hot flushes for a few months then done. Thank god people talk about it now.