Old Before Our Time

In our age-obsessed culture, it can be hard enough to feel sassy, sexy, and youthful even when everything’s functioning correctly. But what if your body plays a dastardly trick and your ovaries pack up way too early, plunging you into biological old age?

We’re talking about the one woman in one hundred under forty who experiences premature menopause. For most, it’s a bitter blow.

“I felt like a dried up old prune when the doctor diagnosed me,” remembers Jennifer, thirty-eight. She’s recalling the moment she discovered a blood test had revealed estrogen levels so low, it was likely she’d experienced menopause six years earlier.

“The doctor had taken blood to see why I still hadn’t had a period, despite taking my last contraceptive pill two months before. I was thirty-five at the time and finally felt ready to have children,” Jennifer explains. “But that day, all those hopes and dreams were demolished. The shock was terrible.

Isn’t it strange we can photograph the surface of far-off planets, grow human tissue on the backs of mice, and modify genes, yet we still don’t know what prompts premature menopause—also called premature ovarian failure—in most women?

In some cases the reason is pretty straightforward—chemotherapy and radiotherapy, some viruses, illnesses, eating disorders, and of course hysterectomies in which the ovaries are also removed. Premature menopause can also run in families.

Nevertheless, for the majority of women, the reason remains a mystery.

Indeed, Jennifer’s doctor couldn’t tell her why it had happened to her. But he was sure years of being on the Pill had masked her menopausal symptoms.

“Suddenly, I understood why since I’d been off it, I’d turned into a nervous wreck. I’d always been a good sleeper, but I’d become a virtual insomniac who tossed and turned thinking every noise was an intruder. Plus, I’d gone from being a chilly individual into roasting alive at night. My husband, Tony, became used to hearing me running a cold shower at three in the morning.”

In the bleak days that followed Jennifer’s diagnosis, one particular worry tap-tapped in her mind. The fact that her husband Tony is almost a decade her junior had never been an issue. “But suddenly, I started thinking he would leave me for someone younger—a woman who could make him the dad he deserved to be.”

“My thoughts fast-forwarded into the future,” Jennifer recalls. “An empty future with no kids and no husband.”

It’s a worry that Natasha, twenty-eight, understands fully. She trained herself to hold off telling boyfriends she’d gone through menopause at the tender age of seventeen.

Her first ovary was removed when she was fifteen because a large ovarian cyst was strangling it. Two years later, a second cyst similarly cut off the blood supply to her remaining ovary leaving Natasha in terrible pain, so that ovary had to be removed too.

“I came round from the operation to hear a doctor telling me I’d now entered menopause. He might as well have told me I’d entered Outer Mongolia. I didn’t have a clue what menopause was, except women older than my mum had it and it made them cry a lot.”

Over the next few weeks, however, Natasha was provided with countless leaflets. “I realized I was infertile and although I was far too young to want kids, I knew I really loved them. I hated the doctor who’d done it to me.”

Like Jennifer, Natasha began a course of hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Although both say finding the right level was tricky.

“But at least it kept my skin looking good—and because it countered symptoms, it let me pretend I was like any other girl my age,” says Natasha.

It allowed her to pretend to the extent that she didn’t share her self-imposed secret with boyfriends … apart from one. “He was the boy I was desperately in love with,” she says. “I’ll never know if me telling him a few weeks before he dumped me was connected … but I have my suspicions.”

However, before we all get too despondent, let’s remind ourselves that the appeal of a woman is far more profound than a pair of walking, working ovaries.

Jennifer’s husband, Tony, put his arms around his wife each time she fretted he was going to leave her. “He said he’d rather have a life with me and no kids than a life with someone else and a large family,” she recalls.

In fact, soon after the shock had passed, Jennifer rallied when she realized she could try to have a baby with IVF. And two years ago, she conceived Rory via egg donation.

“A donated egg, fertilized with Tony’s sperm,” she explains. “Rory looks just like his father. But I feel he’s equally mine because I grew him in my womb.”

Natasha hopes for a similar happy ending. She’s planning to marry early next year to man who’s besotted with her “kids or no kids,” she says. “We’ll try egg donation, but we know there are no guarantees of success.”

It’s not been an easy journey for both ladies. They’ve chosen to stay on HRT long-term despite the possible increased risk of female cancers. And even with the help of artificial hormones, they may remain more susceptible to osteoporosis, the brittle bone disease that affects so many postmenopausal women.

“But I’m pretty good at focussing on the happiness I have now and not worrying too much about what might be,” says Natasha. “I’m wise beyond my years you see!”