I was doing the external radiotherapy and I missed a period. Now it wasn’t a problem, I didn’t have a partner so I knew I wasn’t pregnant, just the sort of expected it may be part of the side effect of the therapy. And I only mentioned it casually to a registrar of the doctor, my gynaecologist that I was seeing regularly as part of the check-up, on my skin and on my bladder, I was doing blood tests that I wasn’t anaemic, you know, part of the routine tests that I was doing. And I mentioned, "Oh, by the way, I didn’t have a period this month". And she said, "Well that’s alright, you are in menopause". To which I exploded, literally, "Why didn’t you tell me?"

And at the time I know that I wouldn’t have had choice, I mean if I had to have it I had to have it, and that was it, but I felt that somebody had done something to my body that I didn’t know, and I hated not being in control of myself. I hated, I don’t like for example total anaesthetic because I don’t know what’s going on while I’m there, what they are doing. I know that they are doing something good to me but still it’s something I don’t like because I’m not conscious. And that was exactly the same thing that had been, they treated my body and I didn’t know about it, and they hadn’t told me and I felt ‘raped’ that they did something to me that I didn’t want. I know I screamed and I know I shouted and, I don’t know, she just took it and said she was sorry, and probably that was something that I sort of, it’s the only thing that I really regret in the whole therapy, all what happened to me, that not the complete information was given to me. Okay I was asked "Do you want more children, would you want children?" To which I said no. And the thought in my mind it implied that I would be sterile after the therapy, it never occurred to me that I would be menopausal. And I felt, suddenly at 43 I felt an old woman, like that was again my idea, a chicken that had been, a dead chicken had been emptied from all its guts, so there was nothing inside me, left inside me, which is completely the wrong idea because everything is inside me, even if it’s not working. It’s not the fact I can’t have children, it’s not the fact that I was in menopause, it’s just it was exactly the fact I hadn’t been told. All through the problem from the first letter saying that there is abnormal cells to the end of the last week when they told me you were off, you are discharged from the clinic, you don’t need us any more, I always accepted whatever was done to me, I always accepted that, because I don’t know anything about medicine, but I have, I trusted the people that they were taking care of me. And only that thing that they did without telling me. It didn’t bother me afterwards, it was just that single episode, and suddenly I exploded, my Italian temper went, the poor registrar just out of university that got me.

And what did, how did, it was a she wasn’t it?

Yes.

How did she react?

Well apologising, and probably she didn’t know why suddenly I had this problem. Because she didn’t see it as a problem, she thought I knew, and that was it, you know. But she was a doctor, she studied and she knew what radiotherapy meant, and to me it was just something I didn’t know.