ADHD and Menopause? Can't a Girl Get a Break?

The answer is "No".

The fact is that if you are a woman with ADHD, menopause is coming for you.  You can't run, you can't hide.  It will find you.

The unfortunate truth is that peri-menopause will find you first. Peri-menopause is the biological equivalent of Ingrid Bergman's nightmare in "Gaslight" without the great costumes and porcelain skin.

Well... crap.

Getting very personal- I began menses at age nine.  At that time all I knew was that my mother wanted nothing to do with my "feminine issues" and tossed it onto my eldest sister to manage.  For my own part, I wanted nothing to do with what was happening to my body and wanted to believe I could wish it all away.

With little information and less direction I tried to deal with having a period at a time when most of my friends were mostly disbelieving that such a thing could happen.  Like my ADHD didn't separate me enough.

At around 43 or 44 I stopped having periods.  I called it progress and thought nothing of it.  I had already been fighting the peri-menopause fight and assumed that full menopause had taken over.  All I had to do was figure out what this new reality would bring.

So here I am at 45.  My husband has been diagnosed with massive (it spread) non-small cell lung cancer.  Non-small cell is ugly pervasive.  He's going through chemo and that isn't pretty.  I'm the caregiver and have no clue how to deal with that.  All a ton of fun.  Literally a year earlier my mother had died as had my aunt, and my father had begun a steady mental march downhill.

Suddenly, I had a period.  After two years of nothing, I had a period.  Or something.

Did you know that extreme stress can cause vaginal bleeding?  Me neither.  I was terrified.

If this were cancer I had no time for it.  My husband was dying and I had no time for this.

I chose to put myself through the pain of finding out what in hell was going on.  I needed to know- my husband was terminally ill and I had to know what I would be able to do for him.

Both my GP and GYN made sure I knew that I was ten years too young for menopause.  Both my GP and GYN had to inform me that I was officially post menopausal and that my bleeding was stress induced.  *sigh*

After my husband's death in 2010, I found myself in the position of trying to figure out how to go on.  One of the things that confounded me was dealing with menopause.

I didn't take this on scientifically in any form or fashion  I just learned a few things.

After menopause your memory goes to crap.  If you have ADHD, your memory goes to crapx2.  Lovely.

In my own experience, my ADHD got worse.  To me, it seemed like 100 times worse.  Reasonably, at the time I was dealing with a different kind of hell.  Menopause had to be a second consideration.


Women with ADHD have to recognize that they are going to have to deal with disparate symptoms and probably when they least expect any of it.  All I can tell you is to be clear with your docs, demand that they do appropriate tests and value that your experience is valid.

I knew a woman at the time that all my hell was going on.  She had personal experience with cervical cancer- my only experience at this time was breast cancer.  To my considerable surprise she basically told me to "suck it up".  When I confronted her she denied that she ever went there.  I have a log of the conversation.

When I tried to mend that fence, she simply refused to acknowledge me.  Life is life.  I refuse to acknowledge her now.

You have ADHD and are over 30?  You may be beginning peri-menopause.  This is a process of challenging you- body and mind- to deal with life going forward.  This could get interesting.