Welcome!

Hello, my name is Monica, 30 years old, and I'm Menapostal.  I mean Menopausal.  Eh, close enough.

I know that a woman my age going through menopause is unusual...but not as unusual as you'd think.  My best friend Nikki and I are BOTH going through it.  We've found, while on this "adventure", that there are many things we were told to expect, and many that we'd never even heard about and had to discover the hard way.  In our commiseration we came up with the idea for this blog.  We know there are more women out there who, like us, are experiencing "the change" while still rather young.  So we decided that this would be a terrific way to help reach out to these women, where we can all share our experiences and the issues and difficulties we face while in this phase of our lives.  So this, the first entry, is my story as to how I got here and the ripe young age of 30; the next entry will be Nikkis story, because as you'll see, we're both going through it, but in VERY different ways.

 Growing up, I always had very heavy and quite painful periods.  I assumed that it was normal, because it was MY normal.  I dealt with it (not happily) and just dreaded that time of the month.  After getting married and suffering a miscarriage, I was thrilled to get pregnant with my son.  During my pregnancy they found that I had an incompetent uterus, as well as cysts on my ovaries.  I was told the cysts would go away after the pregnancy was over and that they were brought on by hormones.  I gave birth to him (via c-section) in 2003, and my periods got worse; nothing more was said about the cysts however, so I assumed they went away.  The same thing was found when I was pregnant with my daughter, but again after giving birth to her (also via c-section) in 2005 nothing more was said.  At this point my periods were unbearable, sometimes making me want to do nothing but lay in bed for days on end, but with two kids and a husband in the Navy that's obviously impossible.  So I dealt with it and kept on truckin'.  Finally in 2010, between the pain and the fact that I started spotting in between my periods, I went in to see an OB/GYN.  They ran some tests and poked around and found that I had endometriosis (tissue build up on the outside of the uterus, fallopian tubes, and tends to attack scar tissue), adenomyosis (build up of tissue in the gaps inside the muscle of the uterus), poly-cystic ovaries, and uterine fibriods.  Needless to say, a hysterectomy (removal of the uterus) was necessary, and because everything was so overrun they had to also do an oopherectomy (removal of the ovaries).  As soon as I came out of surgery, I was in menopause. 

I am on hormone treatment (I rub a gel called Elestrin on my shoulders once daily every day), and while it seems to help a lot of the symptoms, I still have quite a few.  Hot flashes, mood swings, chills, trouble sleeping...the list is endless.  I think the worst is the mood swings.  I feel like the worst person ever because I get so irritated so quickly!  I'm incredibly bitchy, although that's not saying much because I was before this too.  The night sweats are rough too; nothing quite like the feeling that you took a shower in bed while asleep.  I'm fortunate that I have a wonderful husband who is willing to deal with/help me through this. 

Now that you have a background...well, from here on out I'll just be blogging about things that happen with me as far as the menopause is concerned.  Any stories, comments, tips, or opinions are more than welcome, but there will be NO tolerance for arguing or bullying,  I look forward to hearing from more women who are in the same boats we are!