Journalist Caitlin Powell chats to Caroline from Devon.
Tackling cancer, menopause and all the accompanying challenges, Caroline gives an informal, frank interview on everything from sweats to shredded fingernails, from cramp to Wise Women, from shedding negative people to becoming an alpha female.
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What was the start?
I got breast cancer when I was 47 so menopause didn’t start by itself – I wasn’t having any symptoms, other than I’d always had terrible menstrual cycles, you know, that was my life, so I’d always taken Ibuprofen and just pushed through it. Ibuprofen was probably my best friend for most of my life.
But when I had breast cancer, the minute I started chemo my periods stopped and I never had one again. I never previously had the sleepless nights, the hot sweats, I never had anything. But the minute I had chemo, that all started.
I didn’t really notice menopausal symptoms during chemo because you’re so sick, there are so many other things going on and you’re in bed all the time because you’re tired.
But the minute I stopped chemo and started radiotherapy they give you Tamoxifen and almost instantaneously I was sweating like a stuck pig all the time, really bad hot flashes, sleeping badly, really bad joint pain, brain fog – well, I still have brain fog – it was like full on menopause overnight. It was awful.
Six months after my chemo I had a hysterectomy, because I had really big fibroids. It was going to complicate my post-cancer management and basically my gynaecologist and my oncologist said it would make all our lives so much simpler if they just took all of it out. And I thought, well I don’t really care about it, in for a penny in for a pound, so I had the hysterectomy.
The symptoms really kicked in then, there wasn’t a drop of hormone left in me, and then the
Tamoxifen sucks out any scrap of oestrogen floating around.
My fingernails became paper thin, my hair got dry, my skin became really thin, bruising really easily.
The doctor explained it as ‘You’re a 65 year old woman in a 47 year old body’. Lovely, I thought, that’s cheered me up. Fuck off, I’m 65 already?
Were the hot flushes and lack of sleep the worst symptoms?
I didn’t get all red in the face, but I would just suddenly be completely drenched - from the neck down I would be soaking wet. 10 minutes later, I would be freezing cold, because everything’s wet, and I’d have to change my clothes. And I’d have to get up in the night and put thick towels in my bed because the sheets were so wet. I couldn’t change the sheets because my husband was sleeping so I put the towels in to mop up the damp and so I wouldn’t be cold.
So, the sleeping and the sweating, it’s just uncomfortable. And then the really thin nails, they would just rip. They were the three things that I hated the most.
I was on Tamoxifen from age 47 to 52, and I had full-on symptoms, all that stuff.
It did begin to ease a little, so I could stop putting towels in my bed, but my nails were still bad, my sleep was terrible, and I would still break out in a sweat, a public embarrassment. So, I worked out I had to wear fewer clothes. I’d always felt the cold before, but now I thought that maybe wearing a short-sleeved shirt in the winter would be ok. I’d never done that before.
It was manageable but there was no let up, my joints hurt, my nails were crap, my skin was crap, paper thin. Then I came off Tamoxifen.
I did Audrey Backhouse’s Wise Woman workshop and I realised that I was done with the menopause. Tamoxifen makes you fake it, makes your body think you’re in the menopause
all the time. When I stopped taking it, my body was like, ‘Ok, you’re done!’
My nails got better, my sleep got better – I mean, who wants to wake up five times in the night? It sucks!
Oh, I forgot – and I don’t leak as much.
I found on Tamoxifen I had accidental little leaks, literally no warning, not like being lazy and not going to the loo when I needed, but more like, ok, that was embarrassing. You don’t wet yourself but you sort of leak and it’s just awful. I am not going to be that little old lady that smells of wee – always change the pants.
I know that being on Tamoxifen reduces my chances of breast cancer recurring by 1 or 2%, but quality of life versus 1 or 2%...
It’s transformative, getting through it, I know how shitty it is, and it just makes you feel old. Now I don’t feel old anymore.
While you were having symptoms, did you try any remedies or products to help?
I took magnesium, turmeric for the aches and pains, maybe I felt they were working, but nothing really made a difference. I tried the silly teas for a while, I wasn’t really a believer in all that stuff.
Did the NHS give you any support with the menopausal symptoms following your cancer treatment?
You just Google it. It was only when I did the Wise Woman course that I understood more. I mean, no-one tells you anything. I didn’t know that menopause symptoms were supposed to stop. Everyone’s menopause is different, every woman does it differently, so courses like that, or this blog, would be very useful.
The thing I find most interesting about having no oestrogen in your body is, you know, I was prone to being a bit of a doormat, being taken advantage of, a people-pleaser. Now that gene is slowly gone. I feel I’m much more of an alpha male, much more like ‘Nah, I don’t feel like doing that.’
I have done a bit of clear out of the people in my life who were no longer bringing me joy and that has been really liberating.
Even my relationship with my husband, his testosterone is reducing and he’s getting more sensitive and I’m like more alpha. My take on it is that oestrogen makes you much more maternal and caring and loving, and as your levels go down I feel I’m more prone to look after myself first, which I’d never done in all the fifty years of my life. I would always put everyone else first, even people I didn’t like. And that is gone.
And I don’t think that’s old age, I think that’s oestrogen.
I’m back on the magnesium again. I was getting a bit stressed with work, so I started it again and I’m sleeping better. Oh, the other thing I had all the time – cramps! The kind of cramps that are like ‘Fuck fuck fuck fuck, this so hurts!’ You’re running around the bedroom, or you’re in a restaurant and, oh shit, ALL the time. Those cramps, they’re awful. Magnesium has definitely helped with that.
Is there anything you wished you’d known in your 20’s or 30’s that would have helped you prepare for all this?
I wish older women talked to younger women.
It’s a bit like the paper pants when you have a baby. I had no idea that after the birth a woman will bleed for days or weeks until I got to the hospital to deliver the baby– that’s a thing they should tell you about. It’s like that.
Now at 52, I’m meditating a lot, doing a lot of yoga, and I feel I’ve done a lot of work on myself in the last three or four years, and I wasted so much of my youth rushing around.
I look at younger women, and I want to say look after yourself, take a breath. I know that sounds a bit hippy, take a breath, I’m probably a hippy now. I don’t look left and right anymore, I don’t care if you earn more money than me, or if you’re off to Mauritius, or if I never get to go on holiday again, I just want to be happy, be relaxed.
If somehow you can teach that to a 30 year old, read books like The Happiness Curve, so you know what’s going to happen to you, and it’s been proven what happens, then you’ll be ready for it. Read that book!
To be frank, I probably wouldn’t have this conversation with 75% of the women I know. Would I really have a hippy dippy conversation with them? I’m not sure I would. I can give little bits of experience, but I wouldn’t feel comfortable unveiling all of it to them, the fear of being misunderstood or judged is real.
If people do talk about the menopause, it it is like a joke, ‘Oh I’m hot, open a window, try a magnet’. But there’s no real, good distribution of information.
And what really annoys me is how many women didn’t do HRT because they think it’ll give them cancer. It got such bad press, and just the lack of education and information…
A friend of mine was suffering for six years, terrible symptoms, and I’m like ‘GO GET THE HRT PATCH – it will change your life.’ So eventually she did and she said ‘Oh my God, it’s changed my life.’ And I said, ‘I know!’
If I could take an HRT patch I would put it on right now.
So much of your girly bits change as you age – just like the rest of your body. No one really talks about it - I get that - it can be embarrassing. So yeah, I would not have these conversations with many people.
I think a blog, a forum, is a great idea. You can share but be anonymous.
Given that women are unprepared for menopause, how did your husband and family cope?
I had huge mood swings, I mean, real surges of aggression.
I mean, you walk in and they’ve left the freezer door open again and everything’s defrosted. I would run up the stairs and yell at the top of my lungs ‘Five hundred fucking times, you’ve left the freezer door open again, just shut the damn door’ like it’s the end of the world.
I mean, what’s that about?
And that must be really hard for men living with that, because the mood swings are real, the aggression real.
Again, it’s the loss of oestrogen, you feel more powerful, which they struggle with.
My husband wore the pants before my menopause. Now, we wear the pants together. If I disagree with something, I’ll stop it. And that is something I never did before – at first, he found that hard – but now he is proud that I am being true to myself.
Do you talk it over in the family, the mood swings and everything?
I think a good marriage and good relationships with people you live with need you to be clear about who you really are. Like, the freezer door happened again just the other night and I went nuts. And afterwards, I said ‘That was really disproportionate, and I’m very, very sorry.’ And my son says, ‘Yep, really crazy.’
But if there is any kind of communication, it’s usually me. These are not the kind of conversations we have as a whole family.
Would you have liked to have had those conversations, when you were going through the night sweats and other symptoms?
It was a pretty lonely process, living in a chiefly male household, because there was no sympathy. They are really good and they are really kind, but they are not good communicators. They just want to make it all right.
I just learned that I had to say what I needed and, also, for the health of our relationships, and with the mood swings in particular, I was like ‘You know I’m crazy, you know things set me off, so help me and pick your clothes up off the floor.’
I think that’s fair, even if you’re not going through the menopause.
Yeah, but running upstairs with, like, a knife in your hand yelling and screaming like it’s the end of the world is probably not.
Actually, there was no knife.
But I did think I would like one.
The most important thing I would say is talk about the menopause.
Read the books, do the courses. I wish I’d done Audrey’s course beforehand.
Talk about what’s happening to you.
Why don’t we?
It’s weird.
It’s kind of the joke at the dinner table.
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