As time has passed, it’s become increasingly clear to me how life-changing Dr Kalentzi’s treatment for my menopausal symptoms has been, as the second part of my story shows.
During the 2020 lockdown, like many others, I started working from home. I live near the sea and often take walks on the beach. There’s always a lot of litter, including plastic, on the beach and I got into the habit of gathering it every day. Soon, other people joined me in cleaning the beaches. We all felt this was something we could do for the environment. This kind of environmental activism is something I couldn’t have done while suffering from my debilitating menopausal symptoms.
These small actions were the trigger for exciting events in my life. A local radio programme and a local paper both did a feature on me as a ‘lockdown champion’. Then the company I worked for, Colt Telecommunications, held a competition for a ‘Sustainability Champion’ in which they asked, ‘What do you do for the local environment?’ I came up with the idea of selling a 50ml bottle filled with ‘sea air’ as a way of raising funds. I called the bottle ‘Souven-Air’ and it had a tag saying the air was from Southend. I got it into local shops and it sold for £5. All the bottles sold and I raised £492 for the NHS and various charities. The bottles are still selling well. The result was that I was one of the two competition winners. Amazingly, the prize was to go on a 12-day expedition to the Antarctic with an organisation called ClimateForce. None of this would have happened if I weren’t on Dr Kalentzi’s tailored HRT medication – I just wouldn’t have had the energy.
ClimateForce is a global organisation that trains selected individuals to become ‘sustainability champions’ – people who understand the issues of climate change, development and sustainability. The aim is for them to implement and pass on their knowledge in both their professional and personal lives and create meaningful change.
The exciting thing is that the training, which is in the form of lectures and workshops, takes place on international expeditions – to the Antarctic! ClimateForce teams up with corporations to help them with their sustainability solutions and that was how the competition came about.
Again, if this had happened before I’d seen Dr Kalentzi there was no way I would have gone on that trip, I would have been far too anxious to consider travelling alone across the world and staying 10,000 miles away from home. And it would have been too taxing, both physically and emotionally. As it was, I was over the moon! The Climate Force expedition itself lasted 12 days but all in all my trip lasted three weeks. On 15th March I flew to Buenos Aires and then on to Ushuaia, the southernmost city in the world. I stayed there for five days and then boarded a ship. We set sail for Antarctica, sailing through Drake’s Passage (between the South Shetland Islands and Cape Horn), notorious for its fierce seas. I’m the kind of person who feels sick in a car and I prepared myself for the sea journey by having hypnotherapy – amazingly, it worked! I can’t say I enjoyed that part of the trip but I found a lot of solace sitting on deck, enjoying the vastness of the ocean, and watching the blue whales and dolphins, and the albatrosses that followed the ship. The journey to Antarctica took two days.
As you can imagine, the experience was extraordinary – seeing and walking on the continent of Antarctica, all that pristine ice, the glaciers, the massive icebergs, the abundant wildlife, petrels, penguins, blow whales, leopard seals. We spent a lot of time on the ship but twice a day we left it and got on a small boat and pottered around the islands. Among other sights we visited Fournier Bay, Neko Harbour and Whaler’s Bay at Deception Island, where we sailed into the centre of an active volcano.
I would never have imagined, three years ago, in the depths of the menopause, that I would be doing the things I did on this trip. I had lost my confidence and also the motivation to do anything new. But now I had a desire for adventure! I trekked to the top of a glacier; I did a polar plunge in the sea. On Pleneau island there was a crevased ice cap and I climbed to the peak. There were about 170 passengers, most of them in their thirties. And there I was, aged 56, confidently mixing with them.
Throughout the trip there were inspiring lectures and workshops on climate change and sustainability and the roles we could play in educating other people once we got home. It was truly the experience of a lifetime.
On Day 10 we started back to Ushuala, via the South Shetland Islands, passing through the fearsome Drake’s Passage for the second time. I stayed on for a few days in the city, which I wouldn’t have done without the HRT – would have been worried about staying on my own in a remote city, which was quite run down.
I got to the airport, only to find my flight to Buenos Aires hadn’t been booked for me. I paid for it, well able to deal with the setback. From Buenos Aires I flew back home, looking forward to spending time with my elderly parents, who I look after.
It was good to be back home but what an experience I’d had! My mission now is to put into practice what I’ve learnt. At the age of 56, my fitness is back to pre-menopause level. I’ve divorced and am living happily with a new, younger partner. I would never have predicted, three years ago, that in my fifties my life would take such a new and exciting turn. If I hadn’t encountered Dr Kalentzi, it would never have worked out this way.