I still have periods at 52 and can’t wait for menopause! HANNAH BETTS reveals the negative consequences for her health – and career

Monday morning I wake up struggling and screaming from a psychotic nightmare, drag myself out of bed, down painkillers for my tortured lower body, then lie in a boiling bath until their numbing effects kick in.

As for my mood, depressed doesn’t even begin to cut it. I feel cripplingly miserable, barely energetic enough to get dressed.

Objectively, of course, I can see that it is a beautiful spring morning. However, for me there is no objective purpose to it. I’m almost 53, a week into my last period and as miserably hormonal as a 15-year-old waiting for a math test. Or should I say biology? Today’s question: “Why on earth am I still having long, regular, painful periods as I’m limping towards my mid-50s?”

Menopause and its myriad harmful effects have never been far from the news lately. Fabulous 50-something celebrities from Mariella Frostrup to Davina McCall are calling for action. Parliament has a British Menopause Taskforce, the government has a menopause czar.

And of course, this is all wonderful, wonderful and necessary: ​​progress, not just for women, but for humanity itself.

It’s just that, in my own case, I have menopause envy. I don’t fear change, I crave it. I’m tired of being stuck in generational limbo. Give me my #menorights now!

First and foremost, I want my period to stop: now, before the next one, because I’m turning 53 next week (because that’s how birthdays are supposed to be celebrated, with clots and cramps and a doom-laden brain).

I know that menopause – officially the state after twelve period-free months – is unlikely to be smooth sailing and can be associated with significant health problems. Women may experience cardiovascular problems, brittle bones, urinary incontinence, problems with sexual function and weight gain.

However, it’s perimenopause—that phase when hormones rise and then fall, hot flashes flare, and tantrums erupt—that can often cause the brunt of the trauma. And it’s perimenopause that I assume I’m suffering from now, or my body’s theatrical view of it.

After all, I swapped my birth control pill for HRT to treat hot flashes a while ago, but there’s still no sign of an endgame, where the well eventually, thankfully, dries up.

Instead, I may endure for years longer the corpse-like, permanent disorder of a woman strolling into her mid-fifties, with the physical and mental anguish of a volatile teenager.

My periods hurt, like they always hurt. They hit full strength every month and last more than a week. My mood plummets, my head and stomach hurt, I can’t sleep, my daytime lethargy is extreme.

As an extra sting in the story, a prolonged period can also make you feel unwell. If you have early menopause (before age 45), you won’t benefit from estrogen’s protective impact on bone density and cardiovascular health. However, late menopause (classified as age 55 or older) is also not ideal, as it increases the risk of breast and uterine cancer (which my mother died from at age 69).

I worry about the consequences for my partner Terence, who jokes about having to put me on suicide watch every month. He must be almost as scared of my cycle as I am.

Hannah says her period hurt and always has hurt. They arrive in full force every month and last well over a week, she writes

From my teens through my thirties, my mental health hit rock bottom right before my period. Now it’s most problematic at the end of it, when, since I’m already depressed, I alarm even myself with my despair.

And I don’t even want to think about the ways my period makes me a bad employee. The irony, of course, is that menopause, when it comes, will actually be good for my career.

My inbox is full of emails inviting me to participate in panels, protests and empowerment parties. I can’t seem to order a coffee without someone bending my ear about adding collagen for vaginal atrophy, or how matcha might be better for estrogen-drained bones.

Meno-bonding is such a phenomenon that women look at me suspiciously when I don’t participate, as if I were being stubbornly aloof; not playing the game by volunteering myself as part of the club.

You could say I’m not far off from the average closing date. Maybe, but no one else I know my age is in the same boat, with a cycle that shows no signs of abating, and I regret every second of it.

My mother and younger sisters all stopped bleeding in their forties. They, and more particularly my brothers, are incredulous that I still complain about period pain on the family WhatsApp, with the guys mocking me for ‘faking it to look young’.

“Maybe you started later?” experts try to console. I was 11, barely in high school, also an outlier until every other girl joined in around 14. “It’s not faaair,” I want to bleat.

Forty-two years – and for what? It’s not like I ever wanted children. Forty-two times twelve chances of fainting, leaking, pain, dizziness and depression.

I had my period during my first week at Oxford, my final exams, crucial job interviews and crucial career moments, during countless holidays and while nursing my dying parents. But still they come.

Obviously, I’d like the village-old, don’t-sweat-the-small-things attitude that I’m told is the perk of post-period existence. But I’d settle for pain-free and not still be in danger of getting confused no matter how fashionable Tana Ramsay and co are. let it appear. So here I am still buying condoms in bulk just in case, while my friends are enjoying their relief from all that anxiety.

Frankly, I’ve had enough. It’s time to give up my Nurofen and hot baths, my Tampax and anesthesia, for freedom and calm.

Mother Nature, I beg you, give this hatchet a break.