With her dog ?
Menopause is all the rage now isn’t it? Everyone’s going through the menopause now. Since Davina went through it, it’s trendy! I’ve not really got a lot of positives to say about my menopause experience, I found it quite horrendous. I felt like I was losing my mind. I was working at the time in quite a stressful job. I lost that job. I believe that was because of the mental health problems that I was having at the time. I think a lot of that was menopause related.
I remember being very negative about HRT. I suppose I’m a bit of an alternative person; I have massive issues with the pharmaceutical industry and just wanted to do it naturally. I thought HRT was damaging and toxic. I’ve now realised that was wrong. I’m going to have to re-write one of my poems that talks about that!
On the first page of the book I bought called “‘How to Get ThroughThe Menopause Naturally” was a list of symptoms; the list was basically everything!As so often happens, I bought the book, didn’t read it and just carried on with my lifestyle which didn’t help. I was drinking a lot, still smoking and using recreational drugs.You can sort of get away with that stuff in your 20’s and 30’s, and 40’s, but when you get to menopause you just can’t. Well I couldn’t!
I remember one day at work, I was on the phone to somebody and writing down his address and I forgot how to write letters, my brain had just completely frozen. I talked to another woman at work who was going through the same thing which made me feel better. I did try HRT. I was on anti-depressants as well as I was going through some traumatic life events at the same time, so it all muddled into a big horrible mess.
The positives are just not giving a shit about what other people think and no periods. My boobs, which have always been quite pert, just sagged. It’s something I never thought would happen, but it did. My skin’s really dry just looks like an old person’s.
I’ve got massive incontinence issues. I saw something on the internet saying it can be caused by lack of oestrogen and that once you get to certain point with it, you’re fucked! I wondered why nobody had told me it could be related to the menopause as I’ve been going to a urology specialist for 18 months. I rang my doctor because I’d been getting up in the night about 5 times to go to the toilet and wanted to go on bio-identical HRT. I’ve had a lot of aches and pains, especially when I get up in the morning and was hoping it would help with that. I think it has. I’ve been really stubborn about it all and not done the right things for myself with my menopause.
Ruth