If you’re one of the millions of women going through perimenopause, or maybe you’ve gotten over the hump and have entered menopause, you can likely relate to General Hospital’s Laura Wright (Carly), who hasn’t had the easiest journey.
Not only did her undiagnosed perimenopause lead to two unnecessary surgeries, she, like others, experienced many of the awful symptoms that put a major damper on one’s everyday life.
The ABC soap star opened up about her journey with Woman’s World magazine and revealed how she finally took control over the hot flashes, panic attacks, weight gain and brain fog, which caused her to often forget her lines…
“I remember doing a scene with Maura West (Ava), and I kept going up — and I don’t go up,” stated Wright in regards to a term that means losing lines.
“I’ve been doing this for a long time, so it takes a lot for me to mess up and not remember a line 10 times in a row!”
Not only was that “truly debilitating” but getting no sleep and experiencing anxiety, not to mention walking off set for fear of crying and having awful panic attacks, caused the extremely healthy and active actress to start to gain weight and have cholesterol issues.
However, one day, while getting up and making her bed, she was hit with a horrible anxiety attack that caused her not to leave her room for two days.
“That’s when I got myself to a menopause specialist,” she shared. “And it changed my life. It took almost a full year, and I’m finally balanced.”
Her “severe hemorrhaging” led to two surgeries she didn’t need, due to the fact that her gynecologist wasn’t specialized in menopause and mid-life care. All along, it had been a hormonal problem — the dreadful perimenopause.
The actress stated the obvious: “We need way more testing, schooling and education around this,” and talked about how each woman goes through it differently.
“With the studies coming out now, doctors and scientists should be ashamed, quite frankly, that they never took this seriously.”
In fact, things got so bad that she told her longtime boyfriend Wes Ramsey (ex-Peter) that it was no surprise that women in the 50s and 60s became alcoholics because “you just want to drink and escape from how horrible you feel!” She urged others to be their own advocates and revealed, in the end, what helped her…
Like many, she found relief through hormone replacement therapy. Though Wright was estrogen-dominant, and wasn’t able to take estrogen directly, such as via a patch, she takes progesterone and testosterone, which converts estrogen in the body.
She’s done hiding what she’s gone through and advised women not only to find a mid-life medical specialist but to also follow Tamsen Fadal, who wrote How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life and Feel Even Better than Before.
We invite others to share their journeys in the comments below and want each and every one of you to know that you’re not alone.
