My Mother and Menopause

  

Three Generations: My mother, my grandmother, and me

I spoke to my mother about menopause and what things were like for her. My mothers experience going through menopause was a little different then the average woman. My mother had a very difficult delivery of me (sorry mom!). The most major issue my mother had after delivering me was a recessed bladder. My mother had to have a bladder sling after I was born. She continued to have problems with her recessed bladder continuously dropping in spite of the sling. When she was 47 she was told she would have to have the problem surgically corrected and that would include a full hysterectomy. Having a full hysterectomy at 47 threw my mother into full menopause. This was a lot more difficult for my mother then other woman because there was no gradual progression for her or her body. Her and her doctor spoke and later decided that my mother would have hormone replacement therapy to help treat the unpleasant side effects of menopause. My mother followed the doctors orders with the hormones but after a few months decided to stop because the good did not out weigh the bad. The hormone therapy was supposed to help with night sweats and bad dreams but it did not help my mother at all. In fact she didnt get more than a few hours of sleep a night. Shortly after using the hormones my mother noticed additional side effects such as hair loss, dry skin, and weight gain. During the time my mother was taking these hormones was there were, and still are, concerns being voiced by some doctors about the usage of these hormones significantly increasing the development of breast cancer. My mother and I both have extremely bad family histories of cancer in general but mostly breast cancer. My grandmother (my moms mom) just passed away in november from breast cancer. My mothers father passed away in 2006 from colon cancer and his mother (my mothers grandmother) also passed away from breast cancer. So with the prevalence of cancer in our family my mother chose to stop the hormone therapy. Though it was a difficult process (for all of us) my mother went through menopause without the use of any hormones and is happy with her choice to do so today. Luckily menopause is not something I have to be too terribly concerned about any time in the near future so hopefully doctors will come to the conclusion about hormone replacement therapy because as bad as my mothers family history is with cancer, mine is worse because my

fathers mother also had breast cancer, though she survived it. So unless there is concrete evidence proving no link between the usage of hormones and cancer I will make the same choice as my mother not to take part in the replacement therapy. 

Me and Nan(R.I.P)

summer '07

I miss you and love you so much. You still are and always will be my hero