MenoLog#1: “Our common stories must lead the much-needed conversation.” - bel

The content in this blog is meant to play a part in the much-needed conversation directly tied to menopause and every individual bump aligned with aging. Our goal is to deliver a platform where the stories of so many women are told in the hopes of providing perspective and a relatable commonality in the wide spectrum of struggles driven by menopause.

Every week, we will publish conversation takeaways, opinions, findings, interviews, and everything we consider relevant in the effort to shed some light on the slow progression of health challenges we experience as we enter this life-changing event. Throughout it all, we want to offer different approaches to similar situations, how issues are addressed or ignored by medical professionals, as well as the emotional toll it takes in every single one of us trying to get a resolution of seemingly never-ending cycles of unwell.   

In my experience, health-wise, turning 46 defined the moment I stepped into a new world of changes revolving around physiological ailments that negatively impacted the enjoyment and quality of my life. It became a transformational gateway to health complications that I never thought of as, one day, defining everything I did. By the time I reached 50, my mobility became seriously challenged. From waking up all stiff and subjected to unresolved back pain that would turn into a 24-hour throb, to fatigue, sudden migraines and hypertension, heavy menstrual bleeding, and chest pains (among a longer list of over 15 additional ailments) I wasn’t able to go back to life as I knew it before everything physically and emotionally hurt. All of a sudden the aches and pains that I used to relate to “very old people” (as if I would never join the club) became my daily reality and the most outrageous part of it was realizing how unprepared I was to:

1)   Maintaining my optimal health.

2) Being successful in addressing with medical professionals continuous states of sickness.

3)  Discovering how lonely it felt trying to figure out what was wrong with me.

The whole experience felt like going in circles for years and adapting to pain the only viable option in countless attempts to find out the root cause of symptoms I couldn’t get rid of. Feeling dismissed by trained health professionals added to strong negative emotions that left me drained and with no will to keep looking for answers. These damn symptoms robbed me of my enthusiasm for life and pushed me to seclude myself in my little world of affliction. And I hated every minute of it and how every doctor I met with would send me home with opinions about the possible causes for so many symptoms, but no interest in investigating and helping me get better. Every specialist who saw me would wrap up the visit by telling me they didn’t need to see me again before getting any results on tests. It felt as if I was wasting their time and becoming this achy old woman who was at their offices complaining for no good reason.

I knew that like me, many others, and I couldn’t make peace with experiencing being ignored. I also knew that I wasn’t making up any of my symptoms and that it was not my choice to exchange a very physically active life for one that suddenly required laying down by noon, for hours, to somehow recharge. Never my choice to become a living old phone with battery chargeability issues. I was 50 and not well. My body wasn’t lying. My body had been screaming, for years, that something was not right. So when the medical professionals didn’t show any interest in validating the information that my body was providing, I felt the need to share so that my story, and the countless ones like mine, lead the much-needed conversation.       

Menopause looks like this huge umbrella of health decline under which everything can be stored as an explanation for extensive sudden ailments. But the truth is that it is not a generic diagnosis even though it’s tempting to go there.

Menopause is more like one element in a combination of circumstances that will create our very own perfect storm of health troubles. So while I go through the rounds in the exhausting revolving door of health decline, I remind myself to re-engage in looking for answers and step back from the simplistic umbrella diagnosis. At this point, keep trying could help me and hopefully others as well.   

Welcome to our blog. We truly hope our stories make the journey less lonely.