‘The menopause nearly destroyed me’

It can break marriages, end careers and even lead to suicide. Anna Moore speaks to women whose debilitating symptoms went ignored and finds out what it took to get their lives back on track

WILLUSTRATION: NATHALIE LEES

hen Joan Wallace came off the contraceptive pill in April 2018, she was 56, a happy, active mother and grandmother who’d been newly married for just one year. She enjoyed her job in a primary school working with special needs children and was a keen gardener and sun worshipper who loved a holiday. Joan had no history of depression or any other mental health problem.

She’d taken the pill on a repeat prescription for the best part of 40 years, breaking only to have children. When a doctor advised that there was now little chance she would get pregnant Joan stopped taking it, not expecting too much of a change. ‘Now I think the pill had kept me well, kept me balanced,’ says Joan, 60.

‘When I stopped taking it, I lost all the oestrogen and progestogen in an instant.’ Very quickly, her life imploded.

Insomnia was the first effect. ‘My mind wouldn’t stop when I went to bed,’ she says. ‘I started waking early and not being able to get back to sleep. Then I stopped sleeping altogether. I was regularly going three days without sleep. On every third day, I had to miss work as I was so exhausted.’

In July, Joan saw her GP and asked if this could be her hormones. Might HRT help? The GP asked if Joan experienced hot flushes. (She didn’t.) In that case, said the GP, it couldn’t be hormonal and HRT wouldn’t make a difference. Instead she was advised to ‘monitor’ her symptoms.

Joan began to feel she was losing her mind. She tried acupuncture, reiki, hypnosis, and spoke with every GP at her practice, but was met with the same response. Instead