‘There’s too much talk about menopause? We’re just making up for the last 20 goddamn years’
On the final day of their menopause marathon, Joe Duffy’s team invited her into the radio studio to address yet another mountain of menopause queries. “I didn’t realise what an honour it was. Joe rarely invites people in as it’s mostly a phone-in show.
Her interest in menopause came in the 1990s, after many years working with the Irish Family Planning Association. “I began to notice a lot of women coming to me in midlife, really struggling with symptoms. I started to do some reading.” She was aware of a doctor working in the Rotunda Hospital who was offering menopause advice. “So I just knocked on his door one day, told him I was seeing all these women and I didn’t know what to do with them.
Lundy had a specific woman in mind when she wrote the book, remembering how during those days of menopause revelations on Liveline, one concerned farmer rang in to talk about his wife. “He said he always listened to Joe Duffy when he was ploughing. That day he had brought the transistor radio from the plough into the kitchen. And he told his wife, ‘I think this is what’s happening to you’ ... I actually was in tears listening.
She was worried the book might be “triggering” for a lot of GPs, medical colleagues she greatly admires. There is “a lot of defensiveness” in the medical community. The book, she says, deliberately leaves no medical menopause stone unturned so that women can pick out the parts that are relevant to them, and use the facts to back up their own experiences when talking to their doctor. Lundy’s firm warning to women: “If a doctor rolls their eyes when you talk about any of this stuff ...
This began to change in 2015 when a UK government body published guidelines on how to manage the menopause: “They said, ‘Please do not allow this media-driven fear of HRT to affect your prescribing habits.’ The risks of HRT are outweighed by the benefit in almost all circumstances, certainly before the age of 60,” she says.
Speaking of vaginas and vulvas, healthy ones should, Lundy says, be “pink and juicy and lush. Sort of like a ripe fruit, full of moisture and blood vessels.” Menopause can wreak havoc on the vagina and the vulva and be a cause of pain during sex. She talks about examining women “down there” and seeing bad cases of vaginal decay.
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