I went through the menopause at 13
While her teenage friends were occupied with boys, clothes and make-up Keeley Whitham was coming to terms with being told that she would never have a baby of her own
AGED 13, Keeley Witham was plagued by migraines, mood swings, weight gain and daily fainting episodes that left medics flummoxed. She was also so tired that she would fall asleep on the sofa after school and would not wake till the next morning.
Incredibly, it transpired that she was in the throes of the menopause and probably had been since soon after her periods started when she was 11.
But Keeley, now 30 and a recruitment consultant, did not get a diagnosis until she was 16, by when she had endured years of scans and investigations and been forced to take countless pregnancy tests by puzzled doctors.
Heartbreakingly, her premature menopause means that she will never be able to have children naturally or via IVF because her pituitary gland stopped producing certain hormones. Doctors have told Keeley that the only options available to her are either surrogacy or adoption.
Twenty years without oestrogen in her body has also left her with low bone density and a greater risk of them breaking easily. “Having grown up as one of four kids, I always knew that one day I wanted to get married and settle down with children, a dog and a white picket fence, but suddenly that was all gone,” recalls Keeley, who lives in London.
“It was devastating and hit me hard. Even my own mum, who was in her early forties at the time, was a decade away from her own menopause.”
Keeley was one of the youngest girls in the country to go through the menopause. The youngest known case is Amanda Lewis, also now 30, from Nuneaton who was diagnosed as menopausal aged 11.
Against all the odds Amanda is currently five months pregnant after IVF using a donor egg. While their friends were absorbed in make-up, clothes and boys Keeley and Amanda were facing hormonal changes that the average British woman doesn’t endure until her early 50s.
Premature menopause – often referred to as premature ovarian failure (POF) or premature ovarian insufficiency (POI) – affects about one to three per cent of women under the age of 40 in the UK, only one in 10,000 of whom are aged under 20.
DR MARIE GERVAL is cochair of the Daisy Network, the only charity in the UK that supports women through premature menopause and explains that in 90 per cent of cases the cause of the diagnosis remains unknown.
“This adds additional distress for women diagnosed at such a young age,” she says. “It is possible that women with POI are born with fewer eggs, which are therefore depleted by an earlier age or they are born with a normal number of eggs that are depleted more quickly, therefore reaching menopause at an earlier age.”
Known causes include rare genetic abnormalities, autoimmune conditions, radiotherapy and chemotherapy for childhood or gynaecological cancers or surgery that requires removal of the ovaries for other gynaecological conditions. “When a woman experiences premature menopause her body becomes depleted of oestrogen which can lead to night sweats, hot flushes, skin changes, fatigue and joint pain,” adds Dr Gerval.
“Oestrogen is also required for bone and muscle health. If women are without this hormone 20 or 30 years earlier than the average age of menopause (52) it can result in early osteoporosis.
“There are also receptors in the brain that require oestrogen for optimal health, which is why menopausal women complain of mental tiredness.
“Transitioning through menopause can be challenging at any age but when this happens earlier than expected young women can feel very isolated and sometimes depressed. For many young women there is also the concern about when to tell a partner that they are unable or unlikely to be able to have children.”
Keeley, who is single, admits she is always upfront with partners about her circumstances. “I told my last boyfriend on our second date that I could not have kids,” explains Keeley, who has two sisters, a brother and numerous nieces and nephews.
“If I fell in love with a man and he told me that he loved me but could not continue our relationship because I can’t have children that would be the worst thing that could happen to me.
“When I’m ready and in the right relationship I would love to adopt. But I do feel sad that I’ll never have children of my own.”
The first clues that things were not right came soon after Keeley started her periods aged 11, when they were so heavy that her GP prescribed the contraceptive Pill. Aged 13 she became so ill that she had six weeks off school. When her periods then stopped she came off the Pill to see if they started naturally. “When I still didn’t have a period and all my other symptoms remained the same my doctor suggested I might be pregnant,” she recalls.
“I remember pleading to my mum, ‘No, no, I’m still a virgin, I promise!’ By the time I was 14 I had been made to take around nine pregnancy tests.”
But when Keeley then went to college to study A-levels and could barely get through a lesson without passing out, it was clear something was seriously wrong. A different GP referred her for more tests and two days before her 17th birthday Keeley was finally diagnosed with premature menopause.
“The consultant told me very unsympathetically that I had a hormone imbalance and would never be able to have kids,” she remembers. “I was distraught.”
SHE briefly took HRT but she and her mum, 64, felt the increased risk of heart disease and breast cancer outweighed the supposed benefits so made the decision not to continue.
Still, many premature menopause sufferers do benefit from taking HRT or the Pill to balance their hormones, including Amy Brown, a 28-year-old primary school teacher from Durham. She had her menopause aged 17.
“My periods had never started and tests revealed that my ovaries were not responding to my hormones,” says Amy, who has been on the pill ever since.
Unlike Keeley she has been told that because her womb is functioning she may one day be able to carry a baby conceived using a donor egg. “The hardest thing to deal with is the fact that my choice to conceive naturally was taken away from me,” she says.
“However, I love my nieces and nephews like they are my own and adore the children I teach, which reassures me that if I do one day have a child using a donor egg, I will love them as if they were biologically mine.”
For Keeley, the legacy of her menopause is ever present physically as well as emotionally. She suffers from leg pain, low bone density and the same migraines that started almost 20 years ago owing to lack of oestrogen. Her weight continues to fluctuate.
“I’ve come to terms with it by talking a lot to my mum, older sister and two close friends who have all been wonderful,” she explains.
“I have also learnt to look at the positives such as the fact that I’ve got good skin and have not had a spot in years. Plus, of course, I don’t have periods and everything that goes with them.
“But there’s a desperate need for greater research into premature menopause and support for the young girls and women affected by it decades too soon.”