Will the real "me" please stand up!

Going through SIF and facing early menopause has been a huge identity crisis for me. There is so much to unravel and to reconcile - I just don't know who I am anymore.

SIF took away my hopes and dreams. I cannot seem to "think big" much at all these days. I cannot see the point in asking for my hearts desire at the moment only to have it taken away again. In fact, I seem to have no dreams of my own in the pipeline anymore and that makes me feel really sad. Why? Because I always used to be such a dreamer - always thinking of new adventures and full of lots of creative pursuits I wanted to do. I was the organiser of fun events - the one friends often relied on to get people together. I used to be witty - I used to have the ability to make just about anybody smile. I used to have an energy within me that sparked me from one thing to the next. I used to be very much alive.

These days I feel as though SIF and early menopause have taken away my zest for life, my sense of humour, my creativity, my sense of fun and adventure - and the ability to connect with a lot of people.

I feel as though I am a shell of the person I used to be. I feel boring, unstable, too introspective, unsocial and withdrawn. I am flat as a pancake a lot of the time. My world has shrunk considerably to allow for my low energy levels. It is just where I am at yet I find myself missing the old me. Will I ever find her again? Or has she being lost forever in the storm that swept through that was SIF/early menopause? I feel like a different person and I am finding hard to make friends with myself - I feel like a stranger to myself, as absurd as that sounds.

All I can do is to continue to take it all one day at a time. I am reading up about early menopause and may possibly need to look at replacing the hormones that I know I don't have right now - hormones all women need for their general well-being. I have also been researching on the net about ovarian torsion as five years on, I really need to know what happened to my body. Until this week I did not know that twisted ovaries can be untwisted if gotten too soon enough. I thought they twisted and that was it - end of story. But a twisted ovary can be saved. If the pain/symptoms go on too long (it was three weeks for me) - then the ovary is cut off from the blood supply and "dies". The "ramifications are infertility".

So I am hurt and angry that five years ago my ovary could have been rescued if I'd had the right medical attention. Nobody knew what was wrong with me despite that fact I was 37 weeks pregnant and vomiting green bile. My midwife and nurses just scratched their heads in confusion. Apparently 20% of ovarian torsions happen in pregnancy. The gyno at the hospital discounted ovarian torsion because I "wasn't in enough pain." If she'd taken me seriously perhaps my ovary might have been saved and I might be still fertile. It's a long-shot - but I am allowing myself to ponder that thought.

If there are ramafications for infertility after a twisted ovary is removed, then why wasn't I directed to the right help - as in relevant blood tests when I tried to conceive? I could have saved myself three and a half years of heartbreak if I had known right then and there that I was infertile.

It is a hard long road making peace with all that has happened. I feel as though I have never been looked after appropriately medically through-out my whole SIF journey. I am still waiting for the letter from the infertility specialist that supposedly will put the pieces of the last three and a half years together.

There is a lot going on emotionally and I am just trying to filter through it all to work out who the real me is at this time. Underneath the grief of SIF, the reconciling of the last three and a half years and the menopausal symptoms I am learning to live with - there is a person I used to know. I know she has changed; but I do hope I see her again in some form.