I knew very little about menopause. What I learnt made me joyful, fit and foxy

Is the new menopause-awareness movement “catastrophising” and “monetising” menopause to the potential detriment of working women? That is what Professor Susan Davis and Dr Sarah White warn against in their submissions to the Senate inquiry into issues relating to menopause and perimenopause.

But if I hadn’t listened to and learnt from those vagillant voices I wouldn’t be in the tremendous health and joy-filled acting work I presently find myself revelling in. The Davis/White stance seems to me to oppose the very aim of the inquiry which – like my own – is to know how it affects women’s work outcomes and economic status and to increase understanding, see improved access to good treatments and boost supports at work.

Kerry Fox at the Logies on Sunday. ‘In 2017, I was barely aware of what menopause was.’Credit: Getty

Davis quotes a 2017 piece of research by Martha Hickey, who says women health workers “didn’t want to be singled out as a problem group”. This quote makes my skin crawl, not only because health workers are traditionally so put-upon that it makes sense they’d not want to “cause trouble”, but also because in 2017 I was just at the beginning of my efforts to seek treatment and support – through the National Health Service in the UK where I live – for the confusing physiological and psychological shifts that were starting to overtake my body.

In 2017, I was not aware of any “loud voices” in menopause awareness. Nor did I know there were readily accessible treatments for what I was experiencing. In 2017, I was barely aware of what menopause was. I had hardly heard of the hormones oestrogen and progesterone, and I thought testosterone was male only. At that time, I was speaking with a GP who’d received only 45 minutes’ training on menopause. She simply shrugged and pouted at me as if to say: “Well, that’s just the way it is.” But she actually said nothing and, worse, did nothing.

My initial symptoms of heavy bleeding (a super-plus tampon not lasting an hour made the school run tricky) and night sweats (drenched bedding) were not things I understood to be due to perimenopause (a term I’d never heard of).

Over subsequent years, thanks to the rising sound of the menopause education activists, I came to understand that the other strange events in my body were due to the catastrophic decrease in the production of my sex hormones – heart palpitations, anxiety, loss of confidence (super tricky when facing an audience), sudden memory loss and brain fog, bouts of extreme exhaustion, sore joints (aching knuckles and knees), mood swings (my poor kids), weight gain (terrible for the acting career), gum shrinkage, tinnitus and chronic insomnia.

It was this last, and probably worst, symptom that led me, armed with the knowledge I’d gained from listening to the loud voices in the menopause-awareness movement, to insist on being seen by an NHS menopause specialist. My GP surgery finally acknowledged they just hadn’t had the necessary training to support and prescribe for me.

Then came a year of trying various combinations of hormone treatment, turning down unwanted antidepressants and fiercely demanding testosterone – because I had learnt from the meno-warriors that it’s considered by many women to be the missing part in the “getting back to myself” jigsaw puzzle – the “game changer”. And so it was for me, with testosterone (albeit the male version at a tenth of the dose), modern transdermal oestradiol and the latest oral progesterone, which protects the lining of the womb and aids sleep (win-win), I felt whole again.

We know that big pharma makes a killing out of drugs for bone, heart and brain deterioration, and now I know that HRT is providing me with protection from these diseases. And because I live in the UK, I will no longer pay through the nose for HRT like my chums in Australia.

Here, I recently paid charges of $60 for 30 days of estradiol, $47.30 for 30 days of progesterone and $107 for a tube of your female-formulated testosterone (in my experience better than the male formulated UK stuff). However, in the UK, precisely because of the voices of the likes of Carolyn Harris MP, menopause specialist Dr Louise Newson, menopause documentary makers Davina McCall and Kate Muir and the Menopause Mandate group, I now only pay a single annual charge of $38.34 for my HRT excluding testosterone – but that too will come because we are making headway in menopause care.

Next up is the demand that peri/menopause be included in the over-40s NHS health check so that women are made aware of it. I certainly wasn’t aware of it at 40. I wasn’t aware of it in 2017 when I began this journey towards recovering my health, mojo and joy.

The voices I have listened to and learnt from haven’t catastrophised menopause as White and Davis with their last-decade data would have the Senate committee believe and which would have me just shush. My experience of menopause has been something I’ve certainly grappled with. I have had to make colleagues aware of how it is impacting me at work, but I haven’t been “terribly” affected by it because I have had access to accurate information – not the so-called “garbage data” that White warns Australia against. I have listened to the loudest voices amplifying what women need and want – information, education, access to treatment and support.

Before I rocked up to the Logies, where I received a nomination nod (for my performance in Bay Of Fires), I headed off for a 13-kilometre run, something I believed I was no longer capable of in 2017. But hey, its 2024, I’m menopausal, I’m joyful, fit, foxy and loud, and I’ll probably remain on HRT for as long as I can keep rubbing the stuff over my body. Why? Because the vagillant voices I’ve listened to have educated me in menopause and my own health.

Kerry Fox is a New Zealand-born actress who lives in London.