Val is a NETBALLHer Champion. She has spent a number of years in and around netball in various roles, impacting the lives of many people through sport.
Chatting more about female health, Val shares that she wishes she had known more about her body sooner, particularly through perimenopause.
‘In my days, we’d never heard of the word perimenopause, it was just menopause. But it makes sense.’
‘For me what resonated the most was how my body was feeling through those processes and coupled with that, I had fibroids.’
Val shares that she didn’t realise that fibroids were part of the way some women experienced perimenopause as their bodies change.
‘And for black women, fibroids is quite a big thing and is one of the major things that we do suffer with.’
Val shares that at the time, she found out details of her own family history around female health that she wasn’t previously aware of.
‘What I found was that my grandmother, my mother, they all had a full hysterectomy in their 50s, and that’s actually when I ended up having a full hysterectomy.’
However looking back, she now recognises that if only those conversations had been had around female health and what women in her family were experiencing, then she could have been more prepared for what may or may not happen to her.
‘We don’t even have these discussions as a family.’
‘But actually we need to know, the generations coming up need to know these things because they need to look out for symptoms.’
Looking a bit deeper into what she experienced during perimenopause, Val shares how her mental health at the time and her moods were definitely affected.
‘It got really bad, and I didn’t realise that my body was telling me something.’
‘I was getting quite depressed, but people wouldn’t see that depression.’
‘But I knew myself that something didn’t feel right.’
With the support of her husband, Val got support from her doctor with her mental health, after taking note of how her body felt and what she was experiencing day to day.
This was followed by a test of her iron levels.
‘My iron levels were so, so low, and they couldn’t understand how I could continue doing what I was doing.’
‘In reality, there were signs but as females we don’t always see them.’
It took listening to her body and recognising changes within herself for Val to realise she wanted to get support with her female health during perimenopause, but she does share how hard this can sometimes be for women who have a lot to balance with work, family, and other responsibilities in life.
‘To my younger self, I really wish that I had understood my body and what was going on in my body, because those signs would probably have been met a lot earlier.’
Find out more about fibroids here.
Understanding perimenopause
Perimenopause is the beginning phase of menopause, where the female body begins to change in mid-life, and this is due to certain hormonal fluctuations.
As a result, women can experience various symptoms that can impact their daily lives.
Find out more about how female health hormones change in perimenopause here.
Full article on menopause and mental health here.
Share your I wish I Knew story with us here
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