Sheree’s Early Menopause story
“I was just sat thinking: What the hell are you on about? I am 15. How can I be infertile at 15? ”
‘We got some news. And it’s not great news. You are infertile and this means you won’t be able to have children.’ Sheree, then aged 15, is sat in a GPs office with her mum. As her mum bursts out in tears, Sheree sits frozen in her chair, trying to take in the message. The GP is explaining to her that she has something called Premature Ovarian Failure (now more commonly referred to as Premature Ovarian Insufficiency or POI). Simply put, at age 15, Sheree was already going through menopause.
‘I was just sat thinking: What the hell are you on about? I am 15. How can I be infertile at 15? I just didn’t understand any of the things that they were saying to me. They kept talking about estrogen, and mentioning words I had never even heard before without explanation.’
Sheree had understood that something wasn’t quite right with her development. Unlike most of her peers, she hadn’t shown any physical signs of reaching puberty yet. There’d been no periods and her breasts hadn’t developed.
But, both she and her mum, were completely unprepared for the message she was about to receive.
The signs of early menopause
In hindsight, it wasn’t just the lack of a period that indicated that Sheree was going through early menopause. For years Sheree’s sleep had been all over the place. At times not being able to sleep at all, and at other times experiencing hypersomnia. She was always hot and sweating at night, and had eczema and dry eyes. She was prone to breaking bones and suffered from terrible back pain due to her rapid growth which was later explained by doctors as her body producing an abundance of growth hormones in hopes of growing her reproductive system.
She’d see a couple of different doctors to help treat her different symptoms, but unfortunately, no one connected the dots, and no one ever considered doing any hormonal testing. Not until her periods were a no-show.
But Sheree doesn’t blame the medical professionals for not making the link. ‘Medical professionals are still human, and a lot of things can slip up. I can’t really blame someone for not seeing the full picture based on the few appointments I was having a year, over the span of four years.’
And there were also some symptoms, she was too embarrassed to ever tell anyone about. Like vaginal atrophy: ‘I couldn’t wear tight jeans or tight knickers. I couldn’t sit down for a long period of time. When I was doing my GCSE English paper, I sat in the exam, which lasted for about 3 hours and I felt like I was going to burst into tears because of the pain.’
Hiding her diagnosis
When she was first diagnosed Sheree was given oestrogen and told: ‘You don’t have to worry about it now. When it’s time [to start a family] we can think about what to do. Just put it to the back of your mind and you will be fine.’
But Sheree wasn’t fine. And she refused to let anyone know why.
‘I didn’t want my big problem, to be made into a massive problem. I didn’t like the idea of having any attention on me at school for going through menopause early. I was just scared about what people would say, or if people would stop talking about certain things around me. I didn’t want any special treatment.’
So for years, only her mum and dad knew.
She never once told any of her peers that she’d been diagnosed with POI. Not even when she’d break down in tears when conversations started to centre around motherhood.
At the same time, she had extremely low confidence in exploring relationships and her own sexuality, wondering if she even had one, as she had next to no libido.
‘In those younger years, I was very suicidal, and up until I was 19 my mental health was not great and I was seeing a therapist regularly.’
‘I’d been given this piece of information about myself that clearly set me apart from everyone else, and I was trying to push myself into this mould of who I thought I should be and I would mirror others’ behaviour so I could fit in. Ultimately, I think the biggest impact [on my mental health] was me just not allowing myself to be me.’
Breaking her silence
And then at 19 Sheree decided that she didn’t want to keep things secret anymore. She shared her diagnosis on her Instagram - and then she started the account @lifeofpoi_.
This was a huge turning point. Once she started talking openly about her diagnosis of POI and early menopause, she could take back some agency, and really start to explore what was going on with her body and how it had affected her.
‘I probably should’ve started unpacking it all a lot sooner. But when I was first diagnosed I just took what the doctor gave me and then I just ignored it, even though my symptoms didn’t get better. [But] I didn’t realise they were symptoms until I started doing my own research at 18-19. I’d been put on next to no estrogen and as a young woman, I really needed a lot more.
‘I wasn’t really given any information [on early menopause and how it affects the body]. When I came across Hormone Replacement Therapy in my research, it was me who suggested that maybe I should be taking that. I’ve always been the one who had to ask for extra check-ups. It’s just been an absolute whirlwind of me just advocating for myself really.’
These days Sheree is in a very different place.
‘It’s taken a lot of therapy, and I won’t say I fully accept my diagnosis, but I definitely tolerate it. I’ve gone through anger and blame, but that doesn’t help anyone. It’s taken me a long time to come to this point of being able to look back without feeling any aggression or sadness. I mean, I still feel sad for the younger me and what she went through.’
‘Ideally, I’d want all 15-year-olds diagnosed with POI talking publicly about this, because there is nothing out there for us, and there needs to be more representation. But at the same time, I wasn’t ready to talk about it when I was 15, so I get why people don’t want to. It’s still a massive taboo, and you don’t know what someone's reaction is going to be or if you have the right support system. At 15 I thought no one understood me and what I was going through. I didn’t even think the doctors understood it.’
Now Sheree is hoping that she with her advocacy work can be part of encouraging others, especially young people diagnosed with POI and early menopause, to start speaking openly about it.
‘Sharing my story has been such a relief for me over the past four years. Talking openly about POI has massively helped my mental health and I am no longer on anti-depressants.
‘And when I met my partner she already knew that I have POI, as it’s on my public Instagram. So I didn’t feel like I had to approach this big conversation with her, which I’d been really scared of doing before [when dating], and struggled with how to tell a potential partner. Like do you tell them on a first date, and they might go: ‘Whoa, this is just a first date, we’re not having children’ or do I tell them when we’re married and they can’t run away? So that’s been another huge benefit of sharing my story openly. There’s just less of a burden on me to keep repeating it over and over again.’
At 22, Sheree has managed to get to a place where she can focus on life as a whole, not just her POI, but it is and will, always be there:
‘POI is a life-long condition, and it doesn’t just affect your fertility. It deprives you of estrogen which is almost like the battery of your body and it can lead to osteoporosis and diabetes and heart disease and dementia. It impacts your brain development. Infertility alters your life path. But the other physical side effects can actually be debilitating. I can live with the symptoms I have now. The hot flushes and needing to get up in the night to pee, but it does scare me because it’s a reminder that my body is not getting the estrogen it needs. And I know what the long-term consequences of that might be. But, in grappling with POI and early menopause, I have learned to not take life for granted.’
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