“I knew something else was wrong.”
For around three years, I kept saying the same thing.
I had spoken with many women experiencing perimenopause, and I could not find anyone whose experience seemed to explain the severity of what was happening to me.
I knew I was at the right age. I knew hormones could cause significant symptoms. But something did not fit.
I kept saying: there is something else wrong.
This stopped being only about physical symptoms. I was exhausted from being unwell, exhausted from searching for answers, and exhausted from trying to explain something I did not yet understand myself.
I began to feel like a person I no longer recognised.
The capable, confident person I knew myself to be was disappearing beneath the effort it took just to keep functioning.
And still, I tried to work. I tried to show up. I tried to keep performing as though everything was normal when, privately, almost nothing felt normal anymore.
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Problems with my reproductive health did not begin in my forties.
At 16, I was already seeing a specialist. At 18, I was pregnant.
Years later, when my daughter was around four, I was admitted for an emergency laparoscopy because of severe symptoms. I still did not receive an endometriosis diagnosis. I was told that nothing had been found and that nothing was wrong.
A Mirena was subsequently recommended. Hormonal contraception has long been used to help manage symptoms associated with conditions such as endometriosis. For many women, it can be an important treatment. But symptom management and diagnosis are not the same thing.
Much later, in my forties, my health deteriorated dramatically. What initially appeared to fit with perimenopause became increasingly difficult to reconcile with what I was experiencing.
For approximately three years I kept asking for answers. I attended my GP repeatedly. There were scans, tests and hospital care, and still no clear explanation.
By the time I began getting answers, the health problem was no longer the only thing that had affected my life. Trying to remain in the workforce while seriously unwell had left its own mark.