15 Jun
Okay so I had a full hysterectomy at 41 and nobody... I mean NOBODY prepared me for what that first week felt like. Hot flashes starting on day three post-surgery while I was still in the hospital gown. Three years later I am sitting in perimenopause groups and forums and everything assumes you drifted in gradually, noticed things shifting over time, had a slow build. I did not have a slow build. I had a Tuesday. I started keeping a symptom diary mostly because my follow-up appointments kept feeling like I was trying to describe a car crash to someone who had only ever seen fender benders. Writing things down gave me something to hand over. Sleep hours, how many times I woke up, whether I ate anything real that day. Which brings me to the eating thing. My appetite has been genuinely strange since surgery and I found that if I do not actively think about protein I just... don't. So I've been making myself have eggs or Greek yogurt in the morning even when food sounds terrible, and it does seem to help me feel less like I am operating on fumes by 2pm. My next specialist appointment is in six weeks and I am trying to figure out what to actually ask. Like how do I explain that my experience does not map onto the standard menopause timeline? That the usual "how long have you been having symptoms" question doesn't really apply when there was a hard stop date? Does anyone else navigate this? How do you frame it so they actually understand the suddenness of it?