Forty and Fabulous...ly Fucked by Perimenopause

This wasn't the plan

It’s 11.15am on a Tuesday when I arrive at London Liverpool Street station. I wear a few hats in life and today it’s Marketing Director of Honeycomb Consulting Skills Training. I’m meeting my two business partners for a working lunch to discuss our 2025 strategy. For context, these two people are my husband of nearly 15 years and his close friend from Uni, who I have known just as long. They are already in town for a client thing, so I said I’d grab some food in M&S before meeting them at a co-working space.

I go up the escalator to M&S Food. The shop is two aisles in a loop, all the things you would expect and recognise. I’ll grab some sandwiches, I think. But then a sandwich seems like a big commitment – what if I get a filling they aren’t keen on? And what flavour of crisps? It’s hard to know. Some picky bits instead maybe. Quiche? That could be nice. But what will the crockery and cutlery situation be at the co-working space? We’d need a plate and a knife at least. Some scotch eggs and sausage rolls go in the basket. It looks very brown. How about those feta-filled peppers? They’re nice. Where are they? Oh, they are quite oily though. Maybe too messy. Grapes perhaps? I wonder if they’ve got carrot sticks, and I could get some houmous. Umm, there’s not enough for three of us. What else should I get? I look at the bread section, the crisps section, the sushi section, the cakes section, back to the crisps section, consider some nuts, back round to the fruit.

I am feeling more and more anxious. It seems like there are so many ways to get it wrong. I don’t know what to get, I don’t know how much to get. I walk up and round the aisles at least seven times. I’ve been in there 25 minutes. The shop is spinning slightly and I can feel my heart rate rising.

A different part of my brain is shouting:

JO! What. The. Fuck. Get a grip. It doesn’t matter. Anything is fine. It’s Deri and Col. They won’t care what you get. If you spend £10 too much it’s not the end of the world. Just choose.

Eventually I manage to pay and leave, but the anxiety doesn’t. As I walk through the busy station in broad daylight to the co-working space I’ve been to before, you’d have thought I’d ended up in a dodgy area on my own after a night out. My heart is thumping and my brain is frantic. I’m panicking I’ll get lost. Everyone around me seems suspicious.

These are normal people doing normal things. If you get lost you could just ask someone. Or check Google Maps. But you’re not lost, are you? You know where you are.

I’m pleased to arrive and find Deri and Col are running late. I need 15 minutes to sit on a sofa and calm down.

What is this? This isn’t me. I’m an easy-going, no worries, water-off-a-duck’s-back kinda girl. I don’t sweat the small stuff. What’s wrong with me?

It’s a crisp, clear evening in November and the stars are shining bright. I’m in our hot tub in the garden, which is one of my favourite places to be. The kids are in bed, the house is tidy enough to pass muster, I’ve had a normal and non-eventful day.

I am sobbing. The tears keep coming and coming. I feel a heaviness on my chest and an overwhelming sense of sadness. So very sad.

But everything is good. I know grief, I know heartbreak, I know fear, I know stress. I don’t have any of these right now. In fact, quite the opposite. Everything is good. My kids are healthy and tucked up safe and happy in their beds. I’m doing work I enjoy, and I hugely appreciate the flexibility and autonomy it offers. We live in a lovely place, in a house that gives us everything we need. I’m sat in a hot tub, ffs.

Deri comes out to join me, and obviously asks what’s wrong. I try to explain. Nothing, but I’m so sad. And while we are at it, anxious, irritable, tired, and forgetful.

“You sound hormonal. It’s like a mixture of when you were pregnant and when you are PMT”

BINGO!

The boy’s good. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

Sometimes, the internet watchers and social media algorithms work to help you. I started looking into perimenopause and soon got served some insightful videos on Instagram. One listed about 10 symptoms of perimenopause – anxiety, low mood, difficulty concentrating, memory lapses, disrupted sleep, irritability, racing thoughts, loss of motivation, feelings of overwhelm, panic attacks - and, as I watched, I mentally ticked each one. It turns out, even the heart palpitations which triggered me to buy a top-of-the-range Apple watch a few months ago so I could do an ECG, are a possible symptom of perimenopause.

So that confirmed my self-diagnosis.

Ever the scientist, I thought I should get some hard data. About 18 months ago I had a plethora of blood tests done to assess my general health. I decided to re-run the hormone ones. They send you a kit to do a finger-prick blood collection at home, and you just post it back to them. So, within a week or so I had the results.

This is my FSH (Follicle Stimulating Hormone). The green rectangle is the range of ‘normal’. The green dot on the left, my result last time…just in the normal range. The red dot on the right, my result now.

We can interpret this to mean my body is going a bit mental trying to produce eggs from the depleted supply left in my ovaries. Decent data to confirm perimenopause.

This feels like the start of a journey, and it could be a long one. Perimenopause can last up to 10 years. I am very pro the idea of HRT and clearly, I need to talk to an actual doctor at some point. Why I feel it necessary to go armed with a self-diagnosis and blood test results I don’t know, although some of the stories I have heard about people struggling to access appropriate support for menopause would suggest this could be a sensible strategy. Time will tell, and no doubt I will share.

For now, I just have one reflection.

This sucks.

Our 40s were supposed to be fabulous. It’s our time to shine. To regain our sense of self, to go out into the world and smash it with that perfect blend of youthful energy and sage wisdom.

You know what our 40s were not supposed to be? Sobbing in hot tubs. Having an anxiety attack in M&S Food. Being crippled by ridiculously heavy periods. Phoning up to book your car in for a service and forgetting the word ‘car’. Sitting at traffic lights in your home town and having no idea which is the right way to go. These are the things my friends are telling me are happening to them.

In another video I came across, (link here) Dr. Mary Claire Haver shared an image which showed the hormone fluctuations of premenopause, perimenopause, and postmenopause. She described the perimenopause phase as The Zone of Chaos.

From https://wellfemme.com.au/what-is-perimenopause/

I don’t want to be in a 10-year-long Zone of Chaos. How can you be confident about smashing it when you don’t know what mood you are going to wake up in or if you will remember a three-letter word you’d teach a pre-schooler?

We may find humour in some of these stories, but it’s no joke.

Did you know that age 45-54 sees the highest suicide rates among women in most developed countries? I don’t think this is a coincidence. We need to keep talking about the impact of perimenopause, normalise this shit, and look out for each other.

How are you doing?