MENOPAUSE | MENSTRUATION PROBLEMS
Menstruation And Menopause — A Personal History
Because of a hysterectomy, I couldn’t use changes in my menstruation as a signal for the start of menopause
I believe when we talk about our own experiences, IT can help others who might have questions about their own feelings, emotions, or the physical changes in their bodies. I want to share my history of menstruation, even though I haven’t menstruated for over thirty-two years.
My Menstruation History
I still clearly remember one morning before school, in the weeks just after I turned 11 when I went for a pee and saw the blood.
I sat there staring at the dark red smudge in my light-colored cotton knickers. It didn’t frighten or scare me, as my mom had told me the basics of what I could expect. What she hadn’t told me is about the pain and discomfort that could come with it, because she had never experienced it herself.
In the first year of menstruating, it was just that… I menstruated, irregularly, and I just took it for what it was — a part of me.
But then it started…
My periods changed to heavy, and discomfort accompanied them. Okay, discomfort is lightly put. On the second to the fourth days, it was like someone tried to tear the flesh from my inner thighs. I barely ever had pain in my tummy, and only occasionally in my back, but my legs…oh gosh, my legs.
They were painful and heavy and alien to me. But, I just accepted that it was what it was: heavy bleeding for three days, my alien legs, and irregular periods.
Sometimes my periods returned after exactly 28 days, but that was always the exception to the rule, as they could return after anything between 14 and 60 days.
I never knew when it was going to happen.
At school, I always feared for the moment the back of my school uniform would be stained, which had once happened to one of my friends when her period unexpectedly started in class. She only noticed when other children (boys and girls) started laughing when she got up. I was always afraid the same would happen to me.
Pregnancy and the Pill
Then I fell pregnant at sixteen, and during the pregnancy, I didn’t menstruate. Once my daughter was born, I started on the pill.
That was absolute bliss!
I knew exactly when my menstruation would start, and most months I had no discomfort at all. My periods were still heavy, but other than that, all was well.
When I got married, I stopped taking the pill, and it took me more than a year to fall pregnant. After my son was born, I got back on the same pill again and continued with it after my divorce when my son was ten months old.
I stayed on the pill not only because it would prevent pregnancy, but mostly because it helped with my menstruation cycle.
Menstruation Problems
It was about 18 months, maybe two years, after the birth of my son when problems occurred with my menstruation.
Despite being on the pill, I sometimes menstruated for three weeks, dried up for two days, and then started flowing again. The doctor called it ‘breakthrough bleeding’. Those happened even though I took the pill exactly as intended.
The doctor gave me a different pill, but it solved nothing. With the breakthrough bleeding came the discomfort…my legs, my back…exactly the same as it was years before.
Since I had two kids and didn’t want more, I actually asked the doctor for a hysterectomy. He refused. The reason: I was too young. He said I might want to have more kids if I married again, which, of course, was a reasonable statement. Without the doctor’s consent, the operation would not happen, so I stayed on the pill.
The breakthroughs continued, as did the discomfort, despite switching from pill to pill. I asked him again to do the damn operation. He refused again, asking me: “What if one of your kids dies, and you want another to replace it?”
I kid you not. He seriously asked me that, and in no uncertain terms I told him that IF one of my kids passed away, having TEN other children will never replace the one I have lost.
So my trips to the doctor continued until he switched me over to a stronger pill (his words) and suddenly… BLISS! My periods were regular again. I breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
Finally!
A Hysterectomy
Eight months later, I started having breakthrough bleeding again.
Disappointed, I went back to the doctor and asked for a stronger pill. He told me it wasn’t possible, and blew my mind with his next words: this pill you’re on now already is carcinogenic.
I mean, seriously, wasn’t this something he should’ve told me before he had put me on this pill? Now he was the one coming up with the suggestion to remove my uterus.
At the end of January 1992, I had a hysterectomy, where the surgeon only removed my uterus, and I kept my ovaries, which meant I didn’t go into menopause.
I had the operation in the military hospital where I worked, and the nurse who assisted with the operation afterward told me there were ‘quite a number’ of fibroids in my uterus. Whether those had caused the breakthrough bleedings or resulted from the carcinogenic pill, I will never know.
Menstruation and Menopause
Somewhere towards the end of my thirties, I noticed my breasts being painful for a couple of days — mostly my nipples — and then it would disappear again.
The first couple of times I took no note of it, but because I told my husband he couldn’t come near my breasts at those times, he mentioned it seemed to come at regular intervals. Sort of. Only then I connected it with my menstrual cycle.
The cycle of painful nipples was with me for years, but somewhere in my mid-forties, I noticed the times between got longer. There was a time when my nipples would be painful at the same time as our youngest daughter menstruated. I have read somewhere that when women live together in the same house, pheromones might cause their menstrual cycles to align.
Interesting stuff!
Menopause started for me when I was about forty-three. That was when I had hot flushes for the first time, but that’s a story for another time.
It’s now been about three years ago that I had painful nipples for the last time. I still have hot flushes, but not as much as I had in the past. I believe the worst of menopause symptoms lie behind me, as I just turned fifty-six.
Most women notice they are in (peri-)menopause when their periods change or stop. For me, my nipples were my gauge…
