In May of 2009 my business partner approached me with an idea. “Women are always coming to you and asking for help in navigating information about menopause,” she said, “you need to start blogging about menopause because you can make it approachable and even funny.”
My hysterectomy, at the age of 48, brought on surgical menopause. Over the next few years, many of the women I knew took me aside and asked me to fill them in on what they would need to know about menopause, one day. Naturally I agreed to help in any way that I could.
One of these friends, we’ll call her Julie, is about three years older than I. As the years went by, Julie kept assuring me that one day she would need to have this conversation, but not yet. Julie made it well past the average age of 52 with no sign of slowing down. I think in some ways she took it as a sign of her youthfulness.
Then, a month after her 57th birthday, Julie was diagnosed with lung cancer. She had gone to the doctor for a persistent cough in May and been given a prescription for cough syrup. In July, when the cough had become significantly worse they took an x-ray. The test confirmed that Julie had pneumonia and a mass. She had never been a smoker.
The good news was that the cancer was stage 1. The bad news was that it was rated 1B because the tumor was very large. When they went in to remove the tumor it became evident that the entire right lung had to be removed.
Over the next two years Julie became increasingly ill. She went through surgery after surgery, chemo, radiation and any other thing that they do to cancer patients. She fought like a tiger as her body betrayed her virtually every step of the way. I watched her strength as she comforted friends and family. I celebrated with her when she received news of her one and only clean MRI.
On Thursday I will attend Julie’s memorial service. I was thinking, the other day, in all of our conversations about anything and everything related to her body there was never mention of menopause. As all of her systems shut down I am certain that her menses was no exception.
Did she ever have hot flashes or night sweats? Did her emotions get out of control? I’m guessing I will never know. And maybe she never knew. With everything else happening to her did her symptoms of menopause blend so completely that there was no way of telling? Or were they so insignificant compared to all the other discomforts and pains that they went unnoticed? Whatever the answer, Julie never made it to her 60th birthday, and I miss her more than I can begin to express.
In all the myriad of topics that are bandied about regarding menopause there is never any mention of the women who don’t go through menopause. But they exist, and I wouldn’t trade my worst menopausal symptoms with them for the world.
