08 March 2024 , 11:47
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A mum-of-two who was convinced she had terminal cancer was stunned to find out that she was suffering from menopause for three years.
Laura Anne Jones, 43, from Wales, said she was forced to have "morbid" conversations with her sons after she became riddled with pain in her bones that left her bedbound. The mum was certain that she had bone cancer after suffering from exhaustion, hot flushes and a loss in sex drive.
But after speaking to friends at a sports club, she decided to visit the GP and get some blood tests. She revealed that her pain disappeared overnight after they gave her a hormone patch for her to place on her hip. "I felt normal for the first time in three years," she said.
Within the space of 48 hours, the mum went from preparing to say her final goodbyes to her loved ones, to being told that she had been struck with menopause. The HRT, oestrogen patch, helped Laura return to her normal self. Now, she is campaigning to help others and hopes her story will make other women aware of the symptoms.
For most women, the menopause starts between the ages of 45 and 55. The NHS says early menopause is when a woman's periods stop before 45 but there are several reasons symptoms can start before, including certain types of medical treatment, or it can be hereditary - so if the women in your family had early menopause, your chances are increased too.
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Menopause symptoms can also include difficulty sleeping, headaches, muscle aches, weight gain, skin changes, joint pain, UTIs or pain during sex. Looking back, Laura realises her menopause began three years before she was diagnosed when her youngest son was just one. The mum, who is a Conservative Senedd member for South East Wales, previously served in the Senedd between 2003 and 2007. She returned in 2020 after the death of Mohammed Asghar and was re-elected in 2021.
Laura struggled with her issues for three years in silence (John Myers)Having had her second son via emergency caesarean aged 40, she expected to be exhausted. Then the pandemic came and having two boys at home, one very young and one entering teenage years, the single mum put tiredness down to keeping all those plates in the air, reports Wales Live.
She says the tiredness was extreme at points but her body was also physically aching. "My bones were starting to ache and I couldn't understand why," she explained. "Looking back now, it was menopause and the lack of oestrogen, I didn't know that, I didn't have a clue. From being quite the opposite, I went completely off sex and things like that and that was a really weird thing for me and I couldn't work out what that was," she said.
Laura recalled that she started playing cricket in August and every time she got "really hot" and "just wanted to strip off", her team had bobble hats on. "Then conversations in the car started with these ladies who are all roughly my age and a lot of them had been through the menopause and they were like, 'Oh, maybe it's menopause," Laura explained. The mum added: "I started thinking about it more, but again, didn't look too much into it and thought I didn't know what to do about it even if I did have menopause, who I should talk to."
There were two occasions she was off work sick, the most severe was in the last week of term before Christmas 2023 when she had to take the week off. "Every part of me ached. My hands ached, my arms ached, my back ached, my body, my legs, my feet, every part of me. The muscles ached but the bones. I was like 'oh my god...this is it' and I was having sort of very morbid conversations with my kids because I thought I had bone cancer," she said.
Laura hopes other employers can be as understanding (John Myers)She went to the GP the next day, had blood tests, and the following day was invited back. The female GP asked her what had been happening before telling her she wasn't just peri-menopausal but was menopausal. Almost immediately, the relief seeped out of her, even more so when the GP gave her an HRT patch there and then. "As soon as that patch went on, it was like I came back. I felt so normal. I got up the next day and I was normal and it was so long since I'd felt like that," she said. "It was life-changing."
Since the first patch, some tweaks have been made, and she'll have her next checkup in three months. She continued: "I didn't need to get to the extreme where I was struggling so much. My work didn't suffer in any way but it was exhausting for me. There's after-school activities, weekend football, I'm doing my mum stuff 100mph now and all my work stuff and I don't have time to think about myself and I think that's part of the problem. If someone had come up to me or we talked about it or something, it was the cricket team, they were my only relief."
The time Laura initially took off work was because she was ill. However, she did inform her colleagues about her diagnosis once she knew. The mum said she was "lucky" to have understanding management, but said she is aware that not every workplace is the same. "These sort of things need to be just a natural given, the support's there and the understanding from bosses to know what menopause is, what it can do, and then what's needed to help people just carry on and be normal again," Laura explained.
"If I hadn't gone to the doctors and got that help, then I'd be continuing to have those problems, them getting worse and having more time off worse," she added. "It was unnecessary and didn't need to happen. We need to not let them make excuses, let women be on equal footing to men by getting them that help because now I feel normal and I haven't been able to say that in years."