-- Shares Facebook Twitter Reddit Email At age 44, Marni Penning felt extremely off. Some days, she felt as if a weight was sitting on her chest. Other days, she had an urge to just openly weep.
Then there were the days she wrestled with intense anger and rage. She was so concerned about these rapidly changing mood swings that she sought out a neurologist. Penning thought she might be on the brink of dementia.
It wasn’t until she went to her OBGYN’s office in tears that she found an answer. The mood swings weren’t a symptom of cognitive decline, but instead the beginning of perimenopause, which is the period before menopause . “My doctor said, I think that you are in the first stages of perimenopause,” Penning told Salon.
“And she's like, 'Here's what's going to happen: periods are going to get closer and closer together, and then they're going to start skipping.” Related Why some researchers are rethinking the "grandmother hypothesis'" of menopause Penning said nobody had ever told her this before in her life. She thought her menstrual cycle would just stop.
Plus at 44, she didn’t give much thought to perimenopause. She had her son when she was 41 and nursed him until he was three. Nearly a decade later, Penning said it’s become her mission to shout it from rooftops that the “menopause talk” should be as normalized as the “period talk,” in terms of what to expect.
Indeed, Penning said she and many of her Gen X peers have felt “left in the dark” .