After all she has gone through, Ruth thinks that her purpose in this world was not to become a mother: “When I see a mother hugging her children, it touches me, but also when I see the children throwing some kind of tantrum, I say ‘no, I definitely did not come to this world to be a mother, I simply came to enjoy myself’ and, in fact, I am starting to do so”.
She adds, “As a great friend told me, that we women mother with what we give to others with love, with patience, with the beauty of life.”
Today, after consulting many gynecologists, Ruth found an excellent specialist who told her not to worry and to live her early menopause to the fullest and not to think so much, since she had suffered enough because of it.
“I decided to tell this story because it affected me too much. There are many women who live it from the silence of the bedroom, because this condition produces a lot of depression and anxiety. There are days when I wake up very sad and others very happy. Only the people close to me know this and have supported me during this process”.
Among so many professionals she has found some roses, but also many thorns: “Many doctors have told me that I am exaggerating and that menopause is not something you live like I do. Every six months I have to have breast check-ups and transvaginal ultrasounds, and the truth is that it is quite painful. And just as there are doctors who treat me with delicacy, there are others with little empathy”.
Premature ovarian failure must be treated with hormone replacement therapy (estrogen and progesterone); estrogen to help the body to synthetically produce it and progesterone to protect the endometrium and avoid some kind of pathology.
I asked her why she resisted hormone replacement therapy, and she answered frankly: “I resisted for 4 years to receive replacement therapy due to fear of cancer. Social media also misinforms, and I made a decision because the symptoms were getting worse and worse already in this part of my life. I have vaginal dryness, atrophy in the vagina and, hence, I refused to have sex.”
However, today she confesses that hormone therapy has changed her life. Now everything is more pleasant; although there are days of emotional lows, there are also days filled with energy:
“My current partner has been very understanding with me, because there are months when I have no sexual desire, but I have had to reinvent myself: buy sex toys, gels and flavored lubricants to enjoy my sexuality. My body has responded positively to the therapy, the vaginal dryness has decreased and my sexual desire has returned.”
After 8 years, Ruth speaks openly about the subject and wants women who are going through the same condition to talk #sinrecato about early menopause, which should not be a taboo:
“I have dared to do things I never thought of doing, like, for example, contacting women from other countries. At the moment, I belong to a small community from Chile, Spain and Canada who were diagnosed at a very young age.”
She has met wonderful women such as Isabel Farías Meyer, founder of the Regional Network for Premature Menopause in Latin America, and Mariana Valladares, a Mexican woman diagnosed at the age of 25, who has been a great help in the process because of her life testimony.
Recently, through social media, a lady who had all the symptoms wrote to her. Turns out she was diagnosed when she was 15 years old, and now that she is an older adult, she told Ruth that she would have never dared to talk about the condition. Additionally, she let her know that her message to women is to take care of their hormones and not to normalize the symptoms they might be presenting.
Just as there are women who are happy because they do not get their menstrual period, for Ruth, menstruation is life, it is a synonym of health and it should not hurt. For her, stopping menstruating was very traumatic but good, as a person she admires very much told her. For our interviewee: “Everything in this life goes on and things cannot always be only black and white; nuances are also important and the nuances of my life consisted of facing all this situation with this condition”.
This forward-thinking woman has a motto: ‘precocious and fearless’, because without fear she had to face that deep, deep abyss from which she could not find a way to escape of; she discovered that she was not alone and that there are many women in the world fighting against this condition too.
If you want to contact her, she has a page on Instagram where you can find her as @falloovaricoprematurocol. Here, her intention is to raise awareness around the pathology of primary ovarian insufficiency or premature ovarian failure so that women in Colombia know about this diagnosis, support each other as a community and know that they are not alone.
“This pathology should be included in the Colombian health system. So far, there is a group of women who are fighting to file a bill in the Congress of the Republic on endometriosis, which is also a menstrual pathology.”
Ruth says goodbye with a hopeful message: “I am starting a new project that I think will help many women with menopause and I will also post it on my Instagram. Today I have more desire to live life, to fight and to achieve my dreams”.
Traducido del español: Catalina Oviedo Brugés
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