Menopause, Hysterectomy and Me
I'd thought a lot about the operation. I hadn't thought nearly as much about what came afterwards.
Days 1–5: Just Getting Through It
I thought I knew, roughly, what recovery from a hysterectomy would look like. Pain. Rest. Wounds healing. Taking it easy.
What I had not really thought through was what it would feel like to recover from major surgery while, at the same time, being dropped instantly into surgical menopause.
And I mean instantly.
The first few days were really about the obvious physical stuff.
Pain. Hobbling around. Feeling weak. Taking medication. Moving very slowly and being acutely aware that I had just had major surgery.
Then, somewhere around day four or five, that very visible, obvious post-operative stage seemed to improve surprisingly quickly. My wounds were healing. I came off the stronger painkillers. From the outside, I suppose, I started to look more normal.
But I definitely did not feel normal.
The weakness remained.
There was also a strange wooziness to those first few days. I felt light-headed and slightly floaty at times, as though my blood pressure might be doing something odd, although I was never entirely sure what was causing it. It was another reminder that even when the pain was improving, my body was still nowhere near normal.
That was one of the first things that surprised me: how quickly the obvious signs of surgery seemed to improve compared with how slowly my actual capacity came back.
Days 6–10: I Look Better, But I’m Definitely Not Better
By the following weekend, I was starting to have very clear good days and bad days.
I could do more. I could potter about. I could feel almost normal for periods of time. But there was still a very definite limit.
I couldn’t walk very far. I couldn’t wander too far from home. I would do something and then realise I needed to sit down.
There was also the internal aching.
At one point the whole lower part of my abdomen just felt bruised and sore inside. Then the discomfort seemed to migrate towards my right hip, where I could actually see bruising externally as well.
And then there were my bowels.
Blimey.
I had taken laxatives as instructed after surgery, then had to stop because everything became rather too enthusiastic in the opposite direction.
During the daytime, things were often reasonably settled. By evening, however, my stomach could turn into a beach ball. Hard, bloated, full of wind, grumbling away and genuinely painful.
There is nothing glamorous about recovering from abdominal surgery.
Day 11: Oh. I’m Actually in Menopause.
Then there was the other side of all of this.
The instant menopause.
And, frankly, it is a fucker.
Because of my endometriosis, my HRT situation after surgery has not been quite as simple as I had imagined. I had somehow assumed that once my uterus was gone, the progesterone would disappear from my life too.
Not yet.
Until my follow-up, I have been advised to continue the HRT regime I was taking before surgery: oestrogen patches and progesterone for part of the month.
And progesterone and I have history.
It has taken me years to understand just how badly I seem to tolerate it. Looking back, there are things that now make more sense to me: years of horrible PMT, my experience during IVF, and the first trimester of my last pregnancy when I felt absolutely dreadful.
For me, progesterone seems to create a very particular kind of heaviness.
It is difficult to describe.
It is not simply tiredness. It is almost like living behind a screen. Or being underwater. Everything feels thicker and slower. My body feels weak, my mind feels dulled and my ability to experience pleasure seems to flatten.
At its worst in the past, it has made me frighteningly low.
So starting another two weeks of progesterone after surgery was not something I welcomed.
On day 11, I felt like absolute shite.
Hot Flushes, Dry Skin and Where Have All My Words Gone?
I have also started having hot flushes, which are completely new to me.
My skin feels different too. Drier. Almost leathery at times, despite moisturiser.
Whether that is surgical menopause, surgery itself, dehydration, hormones or some combination of everything, I do not yet know. I am simply noticing it.
But the brain fog?
Wow.
Brain fog was actually one of the reasons I first sought help for perimenopause and started HRT in 2025.
This is different.
This is next level.
I can be trying to retrieve a completely ordinary word and it simply is not there.
Not “on the tip of my tongue”.
There is just a hole where the word should have been.
One day I was trying to think of the word “smart” in relation to smart glasses and smartphones.
Nothing.
Another time it was “plantation shutters”.
Again, nothing.
Five minutes can pass and the word simply does not arrive.
I find that frightening because it makes me feel stupid, even though another part of me knows perfectly well that I am not.
So I am trying to do something that does not always come naturally to me: be kind to myself about it.
Getting frustrated only makes it worse.
If I am talking to family or friends, I am trying to stop battling for the missing word. Find another word. Explain it differently. Let it come later.
It sounds tiny.
It actually feels enormous.
Names, Faces and Losing a Superpower
It is not only words. Names have become difficult too.
I had already started noticing this before the hysterectomy. I would meet somebody who clearly remembered me and have that horrible sinking feeling: I cannot place you at all. Since surgery, it feels more pronounced.
I heard Marian Keyes talking on Alan Carr’s Life’s a Beach podcast about something similar. She described remembering faces, names and details about people as having been one of her superpowers, and spoke about the pain of feeling that menopause had taken some of that away.
That stayed with me. Remembering people is not trivial. Using somebody’s name, remembering something they told you, recognising them when you meet again - those tiny acts are part of how we connect.
A couple of times recently I have used the wrong name. Other times I have met somebody before and simply had no sense of where I know them from. Mortifying.
It is another marker of the same thing I am already noticing with words: something I used to do almost automatically has become less reliable.
I do not know whether it will come back as I recover, whether it will improve, or whether I will find ways around it.
And perhaps the Lifeguard does not always need to fix something. Perhaps, for now, it is simply letting me feel the loss of something that mattered to me without immediately researching it to death or demanding a solution.
Just sitting with it for a bit.
The Bit I Hadn’t Thought About
This is probably the point at which I started realising that I had not really thought through what surgical menopause meant.
I had thought about the operation.
I had thought about getting through the operation.
I had thought about pain, recovery, childcare, work, getting everything organised beforehand.
What I had not really done was think much about what happened afterwards.
And that is very me.
I often have an idea, decide it is the right thing to do and then forge ahead.
The devil in the detail has never particularly been my department.
So there I was, around day 11, suddenly thinking:
Hang on.
I am 48.
I am now in surgical menopause.
What does that actually mean?
Then came words like cardiovascular health. Bone health. Osteoporosis. Strength training.
Things that, somewhere in my head, still belonged to older people.
And then came the slightly uncomfortable realisation:
Oh.
That includes me now.
“Being Carefree Feels Like It Has Gone”
I think this has been one of the hardest things to get my head around.
It is not that I think life is over.
It is more that suddenly everything seems to have a consequence.
When you are younger, there is something about believing your body will put up with almost anything.
Of course that is not everybody’s experience. People who live with chronic illness, cancer or significant health problems may have to confront those limits far earlier.
But I did not.
Somehow I still carried this vague sense that all those health consequences happened to somebody else.
Drink too much one weekend? Fine.
Don’t think about strength training? Fine.
Eat what you fancy? Fine.
Your body will sort itself out.
And now I am having to confront the idea that perhaps I need to take a little more responsibility for the body I am going to live in for the next part of my life.
That sounds terribly sensible.
I am not entirely sure I like it.
Can I Actually Rely on Myself?
Then comes another uncomfortable thought.
Can I actually rely on myself to do this?
I am perfectly capable of becoming wildly enthusiastic about something for three weeks, buying all the equipment, researching the living daylights out of it and then deciding everything is probably fine after all.
So part of me worries:
Will I make sustainable changes?
Or will I start with great intentions and then quietly sack the whole thing off?
Enter my coping styles.
Days 11–12: Storming In
Once I realised I probably needed to understand surgical menopause properly, I did what I often do.
I went completely mad on ChatGPT and Gemini. I researched websites. I searched for experts. I followed menopause doctors, nutritionists and fitness people on Instagram.
I wanted information.
Lots of information.
But quite quickly I realised I was looking for something else too.
I wanted education, but I did not want to be preached at.
I did not want to feel scared into behaving myself.
I did not want menopause advice that seemed to say:
Give up everything you enjoy. Never drink. Eat perfectly. Exercise constantly. Optimise yourself into oblivion.
Because I am 48 and I still want to live.
I like chocolate.
I like a glass of wine.
I like going away with my girlfriends and occasionally getting a bit hammered.
That matters to me.
I watched one reel which said that every unit of alcohol increases breast cancer risk. I am not disputing the science behind risk. But something about the way it landed just frightened me.
And that made me realise that I am not only looking for facts.
I am looking for the right energy.
I want somebody to say:
Yes, there are changes.
Yes, some of them matter.
Yes, you may need to look after yourself differently.
But you are still allowed to have a bloody life.
Maybe what I am looking for is information with some comfort wrapped around it.
Finding the Right Voices
I have really enjoyed Julia Bradbury.
Her experience has obviously been very different from mine and she has been through things I would never wish on anybody, but there is something about her energy that I really respond to.
I like the exercise content. I have learned about Zone 2. I like the sense of possibility.
I also love Louise Newson.
I think part of what appeals to me is the academic side. I like understanding the science. I like reading things that connect with my own background in mental health.
But I also think I want her to come and live with me and reassure me every morning that everything is going to be okay.
So perhaps there is a theme emerging.
Facts, yes.
Fear, no.
Day 14: Apparently I Now Moisturise My Entire Body
By around day 14, I was dealing with what I can only describe as my newly leathery skin.
So there I was, whacking moisturiser all over myself in a way I never previously needed to.
Another small thing.
Another reminder that my body feels different.
Day 15: Menopause, But Make It Anti-Diet
I started reading Eat to Thrive During Menopause by Jenn Huber.
I loved her almost immediately.
The language is about intuitive eating. Anti-diet. Compassion.
Music to my ears.
I do not want another set of rules.
I do not want food to become another arena in which I can succeed, fail or feel guilty.
What I need right now is almost the opposite.
My body has changed suddenly.
My hormones have changed suddenly.
I feel as though I am in completely unfamiliar territory.
So the repeated message of compassion really landed.
One idea from the book particularly stayed with me: menopause is already difficult enough without food becoming another burden.
That is exactly the sort of voice I need.
Give me the information.
Do not hide things from me.
But please handle me with a little care while you do it.
Maybe Change Had Already Started
I have also been thinking about the anaesthetist I met on the day of my hysterectomy, and why what she said about strength training landed so strongly.
At first I wondered whether it was just serendipity: the right person saying the right thing at exactly the right moment.
But perhaps it was not quite that simple.
For months I had been half-noticing all those articles about midlife, muscle, strength and ageing. You pick up a weekend supplement, and there it is again: strength training, strength training, strength training. I was not exactly acting on it, but perhaps some of it had been quietly going in.
So maybe I had not been as oblivious to what was coming as I thought. Part of me may have been opting out of thinking too hard about menopause and surgery, while another part was already beginning to contemplate change.
My psychologist brain goes to the old Stages of Change model. Perhaps I was already somewhere around contemplation without really knowing it. Then this woman spoke with enthusiasm rather than judgement, and suddenly something I had been half-hearing for months properly landed.
Maybe change sometimes starts before we know we have started changing.
Day 16: Who Am I and What Have I Done With Myself?
Day 16 after my hysterectomy and oophorectomy.
I am drinking soya milk.
I am sprinkling chia seeds and goji berries on yoghurt.
Who saw that coming?
What is interesting is that I am not eating less.
I am not dieting.
And yet I somehow feel more in control of food and, strangely, freer around it.
I was talking to a friend about the guilt and control that can become attached to eating, particularly for women.
There is something here that I have not quite unpacked yet.
Changing what I eat because I am trying to nourish myself feels very different from changing what I eat because I am trying to make myself smaller.
I think I need to sit with that one.
Opting Out, Storming In and Calling the Lifeguard
Looking back, I think I Opted Out in the run-up to surgery.
I detached from what was coming.
I did not think too far ahead.
But actually, I am not sure that was entirely unhealthy.
Sometimes we need to Opt Out for a while.
I had family to look after. Work to finish. A household to keep going. An operation to get myself through.
Thinking too hard about everything that might follow could easily have overwhelmed me.
The problem would have been staying there.
Instead, once I came out of surgery, I went in the opposite direction.
I Stormed In.
Right. What do I need to know? What do I need to eat? What exercise should I do? What happens to my bones? My heart? My skin? My brain? Who should I follow? Which book should I buy?
Control, control, control.
And somewhere in the middle of that, I am trying to find my Lifeguard.
Because, if ever there was a time when I feel all at sea, this is it.
I have had major surgery.
My hormones have changed dramatically.
My body feels unfamiliar.
My brain feels unfamiliar.
And, if I am truthful, I am frightened about what this new version of me is going to look like.
The Lifeguard, I think, is the part of me trying to steady things.
Not pretending nothing has changed.
Not catastrophising about what has changed.
Not redesigning my entire life by Tuesday.
Just helping me swim back towards shore.
Day 17: My Body Says No
Today I am absolutely knackered.
The exhaustion hit me like a wall.
But it is an odd kind of exhaustion.
Not that desperate sleepiness where you could crawl under a table and fall asleep.
This was much more physical.
It began with a persistent light-headed, almost empty-headed feeling.
I wondered if my blood pressure was low.
It was fine.
Maybe dehydration?
I drank loads.
Still there.
I lay down a couple of times but could not sleep.
Gradually it lifted as the day went on, but my body continued to feel incredibly heavy.
And this evening, something quite small happened that I am oddly pleased about.
I had a word with myself.
I did not Storm In and push through it.
I did not submit by continuing to meet everybody else’s needs.
I called the Lifeguard.
It is just after ten o’clock.
I am in bed.
That will do for today.
Day 18: Running on Empty
I woke up feeling better than the day before and, on paper, had a fairly normal day. I worked, took my son out, cleaned, made dinner and generally did the mum thing.
But I was absolutely exhausted.
It still isn't really sleepiness. It's more like having very little in the tank. I can function, but I don't have much to give. My stomach is still uncomfortable rather than painful, my bowels aren't quite right, and the bloating comes and goes. My body is making it very clear that, despite looking increasingly normal, I'm not better yet.
Meanwhile, New Menopause Me continues.
One coffee in the morning. Herbal tea. Soya milk. Protein. Apparently I now make lentil salads.
I still have a Twix or milk chocolate after dinner. I'm not giving that up. And I'm definitely not replacing it with dark chocolate, which to me would be roughly equivalent to eating plastic.
But I've noticed another fear creeping in.
What happens when I feel better?
Right now, some of these changes are relatively easy because I don't feel like drinking four pints or eating loads of crap. But when I feel completely like myself again, will I think fuck it and go straight back to my old habits?
I'm also struggling to find the right fitness voices. I don't want to be ripped or really skinny. I want to be strong and look after my body as I get older, but I don't want exercise - or menopause - to become my entire life.
Perhaps that's the point. Experts can show me their version of the gold standard. My job might be to learn from them, nick the useful bits and create something that actually fits my life.
Or perhaps I've just got no bloody discipline.
I don't know yet.
I am also still waiting for biopsy results. I am trying not to Opt Out from that completely, but I am also not allowing myself to disappear down the rabbit hole of everything they could possibly mean. I can't let it ruin every day while I wait. But that doesn't mean it isn't there. It is, somewhere in the background.
Day 19: There It Is Again
Today felt more normal again. I had something professionally demanding to do and felt unexpectedly anxious beforehand - almost a bit of stage fright.
It was fine. But I noticed a couple of those little cognitive glitches again.
And there it was again.
Names. Words. Details. Not a new revelation, just another small marker of something I have already been noticing: my brain does not feel quite as predictable as it used to.
I am not going to keep rediscovering that every time it happens. I am just noticing it.
Finding Someone Who Does Not Shout at Me
I am still reading Jenn Huber’s Eat to Thrive During Menopause, and I am hanging on to the introduction in a way I have never hung on to the introduction of a cookery book before.
She captures something I have been struggling with: the sense that menopause information can feel as though it is shouting risk at you from every direction.
Heart health. Bone health. Muscle. Weight. Cancer. Alcohol. Food. Exercise. Sleep.
I want the information. I do not want anyone hiding risks from me. But I do not want to be frightened into looking after myself either.
God, My Poor Mum
And reading about menopause has made me think differently about my mum.
My poor mum.
When she was going through menopause, I would have been in my twenties. She became very depressed. She seemed to develop all sorts of strange physical reactions and intolerances she had not had before, and she continued having hot flushes and sweats for years.
This was 25 or 30 years ago. Nobody was talking about menopause in the way we do now. I had no framework for understanding what might have been happening to her.
I just saw my mum being different. And I was impatient with her.
Now I wonder whether some of that irritation was anxiety. It is hard to see somebody else in pain, particularly a parent. Sometimes perhaps impatience is a way of keeping something frightening at arm’s length.
And parents are among our earliest models of what getting older might look like. Mum’s experience was frightening. Experiencing menopause myself now makes me understand something about her that I could not understand when she was alive.
That is quite painful.
Looking for People Who Have Been There Before
This has also made me realise that I do something particular when life becomes frightening and unpredictable: I look for people who have been there before.
When my mum was dying, I searched for books, blogs and other people’s accounts. Greg Wise and Stephen Mangan became unexpectedly important to me. I was not really looking for somebody to tell me everything would be fine. It plainly was not fine.
I think I was looking for a map.
Somebody else’s experience could not tell me exactly what was going to happen, but it could make the territory slightly less unknown.
And perhaps that is what I am doing now.
The systemic therapist Barry Mason wrote about four positions around safety and certainty: safe certainty, unsafe certainty, unsafe uncertainty and safe uncertainty. His idea of safe uncertainty feels particularly relevant to me at the moment. It is not about somehow achieving certainty. It is about having enough safety to tolerate the fact that some things remain unknown.
That may be why the right voices matter so much. They do not promise me that everything will be okay. They give me some orientation.
In Schema Therapy terms, some very basic emotional needs feel activated: safety and stability; enough autonomy and competence to understand what is happening and make my own choices; and the freedom to have my feelings and needs taken seriously rather than being dictated to or dismissed.
So maybe searching is not always Storming In.
Sometimes, undoubtedly, I am trying to research uncertainty out of existence. One more article. One more expert. One more answer.
But sometimes information and other people’s experience seem to move me towards something more like safe uncertainty. I still do not know exactly what is going to happen. I just feel a little safer not knowing.
Maybe that is the Lifeguard too. Not promising that my memory will come back, that I will stick to strength training, that the biopsy will be fine, or that I have cracked menopause because I have discovered lentils.
Just helping me tolerate not knowing yet.
The Fatigue, the Family and the Guilt
And then there is the fatigue.
Wow.
It is still striking me just how tired I am. Not necessarily sleepy. Just physically depleted.
This is when you really notice what it means not to have family nearby to call upon. Rest sounds wonderfully straightforward until you have a family. Somebody still has to make food, sort things out and keep ordinary life moving.
If I step back, more of that inevitably falls to my husband. He is wonderful, but that does not magically remove the guilt.
And here I notice another familiar question rather than a brand-new revelation. Am I Submitting to old patterns of subjugation and self-sacrifice - automatically putting everybody else first and feeling guilty when I do not?
Or is my Lifeguard also recognising a rather less psychological truth: there are realities to family life. Other people have needs. Looking after myself does not mean nobody else matters.
Yesterday I did take time out, as much as I could, and I was pleased with myself for doing it.
It has made me think a lot about people recovering from illness or surgery without another adult there to pick things up. Single parents. People living alone. People without family nearby or practical support.
Sometimes the problem is not a coping style. Sometimes the reality is simply bloody difficult.
For now, the tiredness is still here.
And I am trying, imperfectly, to listen to it.
A Note About This Diary
This is a personal diary of my own experience of hysterectomy, oophorectomy and surgical menopause. It is not medical advice, and everybody's surgery, recovery and hormone treatment will be different.
