Sue Richards, regular Canadian gal, heats up as her reproductive Best Before Date expires.
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
Sudden menopause can be brought about a number of ways but surgery is the most common reason. Here are two very familiar surgeries that lead to an instant and dramatic drop in your hormone levels.
Oophorectomy: you have both of your ovaries removed.
Full Hysterectomy: you have your ovaries, uterus and both fallopian tubes removed.
Even if you have a partial hysterectomy and you do not have your ovaries removed, the ovaries may be damaged during the surgical procedure resulting in sudden menopause. For the same reason, sudden menopause may result from having your “tubes tied” - more formally known as tubal ligation.
Menopause induced by surgery can be very challenging and frightening to deal with. First you need to deal with the fact you are having major surgery. Further, surgery may be required as a result of disease like ovarian cancer. Either of these situations peg in as significant experiences that will have major impact on your entire life. Adding the menopause into the mix does not make the situation any easier.
There is no argument that sudden menopausal symptoms are more intense than the slow poke age appropriate menopause symptoms that come and go as they please. Consider this picture. Your entire hormone department has shut down production, packed up the shop and moved out of town while you were out of commission. I’ve heard from dozens of women that claim no one on their medical team mentioned this ‘downsizing’ in the pre-surgery, let’s talk about what’s going to happen post surgery stage.
Surprise! Welcome to sudden menopause girlfriend.
Even without surgery, treatment for disease can bring on sudden menopause. Radiation Therapy and Chemotherapy may also damage your ovaries, which result in chemically induced sudden menopause. Sometimes, ovarian functioning will return to normal after the chemical treatment has been completed. However sometimes, even though your period returns, you may no longer be able to reproduce.
Tamoxifen is often prescribed for women who have breast cancer and serves to block your body’s ability to make estrogen. Without estrogen production, your body will go into the menopause.
All this information makes regular menopause seem like a party to me.
Sue Richards
Tags: My Menopause Blog, my menopause blog,Sue Richards, peri-menopausal, menopause relief, information on sudden menopause, baby boomer, womens health news, menopause symptoms .
March 7th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
“I’ve heard from dozens of women that claim no one on their medical team mentioned this ‘downsizing’ in the pre-surgery”
Not only are women not prepared because of their health care providers’ lack of understanding of this, but many women find afterwards, when they are in the midst of this baffling meltdown, that their doctors deny its reality. All too often women are told that they are crazy or failing to deal with their loss of fertility or depressed, and so have no choice but turn blame inward, further increasing their pain and sense of isolation. Further, doctors sometimes offer them antidepressants as a please-go-away sop, alienating and offending their patients who don’t feel that this is their problem at all…even though there are good physiologic reasons why SSRI antidepressants do in fact help limit some of the chemical disruptions in the brain that result from catastrophic menopause and limit our ability to gather our thoughts well enough to deal with the situation. An interesting, if slightly dated in some portions, work on the impact our hormones (and their abrupt fluctuations) have on our brains is “Women’s Moods” by Deborah Sichel and Jeanne Watson Driscoll.