Dear Period: I Miss You

A love letter of sorts

So I know that title sounds a little like a Dear Diary entry. But period talk has a way of transporting me right back to when I was 12 years old, an age when one’s period (aka: the curse, Aunt Flo, that time of the month, the monthly visitor) consumes hours of waking thought.

For nearly 30 years—through middle and high school, college and first jobs, falling in and out of love, moving cities and countries, getting married, between pregnancies— that crampy, annoying, inconvenient monthly period accompanied me through it all.

Until it didn’t.

A month after my fortieth birthday, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. Suddenly, I was a passenger on a high-speed train, careening through an unfamiliar and hostile landscape.

I was told I would need surgery within a week, followed by chemotherapy. Then there was this little detail, mentioned almost as an aside: I would need to get a shot to shut down my ovaries. The reason was twofold—one, chemo drugs can damage the ovaries, so putting them “to sleep” could help protect them, and two, estrogen was my cancer’s food of choice, so cutting off my supply could prevent it from growing.

Here’s how it went: After I had surgery to remove the guilty party (my right breast, RIP), a very nice nurse came to my house and administered the ovarian suppression shot into the fleshy top of my left butt cheek. The needle was long, and I shut my eyes and dug a fingernail into my palm to distract from the pain.

Still, I got a version of a period soon after, a few days before my first chemo session.

“C’est normal,” my French oncologist said, waving her hand, explaining that the medication can take some time to work.

What I didn’t know then was that would be my final period… 4EVA (I warned you, my 12-year-old self is steering this ship).

I continued hurtling along on the bullet train, attending chemo after chemo, shaving my head, lying in donut-shaped scanning machines, eating rice cakes and cheese to curb the nausea.

What I was not doing was getting my period.

Once the so-called “active” treatment was done (16 rounds of chemo, 25 sessions of radiation), it was on to the maintenance phase—daily pills to suppress estrogen, and the monthly shot to keep my ovaries asleep. I would need to do both for five years, maybe more, to lower the risk of the cancer coming back.

I was no longer on the speeding train. Now, I found myself sitting in a regular, unremarkable train carriage, still snaking through foreign terrain but at a more stable pace. I could finally take a beat and start noticing the details around me, one of which was this: I was now a mono-boobed woman whose childbearing years were likely behind me. At this point, there was still the possibility that my period would return in a few years, once I had passed the riskiest window and I could stop the monthly shots.

And then I made the decision to surgically remove my ovaries. My mother had died of ovarian cancer, so my doctors thought it prudent to take them out. Blessedly, I already had two beautiful children, but it was still gut-wrenching to finally close the door on having more. I felt too young to be here. My friends were only starting to notice some vague symptoms of perimenopause, if any, and here I was already in full-blown menopause, and about to lose the two small, almond-shaped things that had played a pivotal role in creating my children.

The surgery was fine, easy. I was left with three small scars, one in my belly button and two above my hip bones. I felt better about the decision, glad to have taken my future into my own hands.

A couple of months passed, and I found myself at the drugstore, walking through the “feminine products” aisle. I glanced at those rows of tampons and pads and felt overcome by longing.

I would never have a period again.

For all those years, it had served as a way to anchor my months. Perhaps an unpleasant, nuisance of an anchor, but an anchor nonetheless. During times of uncertainty, at least I could rely on its monthly appearance. And in recent years, with all the talk and awareness around cycle syncing, I had started to treat my period as a monthly reset, a forced pause to allow my body to rest.

Now, my months are missing that cyclicality. There’s no luteal or follicular phase for me, no time when I should be choosing yoga over a run or eating sweet potato over steak.

But it runs deeper than that.

Each month, the lack of a period is a reminder that I had breast cancer. If it weren’t for the diagnosis, I would still be complaining about cramps and mood swings with my girlfriends. I would still be thinking about menopause as something far off in my future. I could still entertain the possibility of having another child.

My period represents the before, its absence the after.

Is this how a man feels? His insides humming along, month after month, without the peaks and valleys of hormonal fluctuation. I’m adrift, no longer in sync with the moon’s expansion and contraction.

Will I ever feel whole again?

Xo,

Alison