AT FORTY-TWO, Dale Spender was stunned to be experiencing menopausal symptoms. ‘It’s like a fever,’ the feminist author and academic told her friends when the flushes took over her life. ‘I’m so hot, and burning and nauseated, and then so cold and shivering. One minute I want to take all my clothes off, the next I need a coat. It’s unremitting, happening several times an hour.’ Restaurants were out of the question, sleepless nights a frequent occurrence. Work was impossible, and there were so many things she couldn’t remember that she thought she had senile dementia. When she complained about the problem, people were generally unsympathetic.
‘I thought you would be too busy,’ one friend said disappointedly. ‘Oh, come on, snap out of it. Find something interesting to do,’ said another when she tried to describe
how desperate she had become. Always one to put her friends’ prejudices to the test, Dale altered her stance. When asked about her health she began to say, ‘I’m not very well. I have a fever. Hot and cold flushes. Memory loss. I can’t go out anywhere. I can’t sleep. It’s awful . . . and it’s called malaria.’ Now everyone rushed to comfort her: ‘Poor you. Do you have something to take for it?’ Friends who had previously advised her to take nothing for her flushes quickly changed their tune.
Eight years later Dale said it still made her angry that the treatment that helped to relieve her ‘malaria’ was hormone replacement therapy, widely known as HRT. It is not surprising that she was angry. This independent woman had, after all, spent thirty years of her life taking hormone pills, first for contraception and then for menopause.
Before deciding to embark on HRT she gave just about everything else’ a try, but to no effect. She also had an altercation with one (male) GP who, when asked to explain the mechanics of hot flushes and HRT, said: ‘Your thermostat isn’t functioning properly and the pill fixes it.’ She refused to pay a medical fee for what she considered to be ‘electrical appliance’ advice and consulted another (female) GP, who admitted that she didn’t know why a woman’s temperature should rise in these circumstances. In any event the therapy proved successful: the flushes were banished and her life was restored.
Making the decision to go onto HRT was not difficult in the end. ‘I think I would have considered suicide eventually, not only because of the relentless symptoms but because of the unsympathetic treatment I got.’ The really difficult part was, and is, living with her decision. ‘I don’t like taking any drugs, including HRT, even though I’m down to the minimal dose. There’s also something inside me that’s quite perplexed that the flushes and sweats should be part of nature. In so
many other areas, if your body is given the right exercise, good food, and is not overstressed, it responds accordingly. The return of symptoms, when I take a break from HRT, makes me feel so powerless. And the fact that I’m still regularly pumping these pills into my body is a source of stress in my life.’
Dale Spender says that if there were any other way, ‘even taking an ice-cold bath each day’, she’d try it. In the absence of an acceptable alternative, and until she feels strong enough to risk another dose of flushes and sweats, she has decided to continue with HRT.
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