Thread by @Telegraph

♀️"I went into menopause at the age of 37 - no woman should have to suffer in silence"

Writing for @Telegraph, one woman explains how the early diagnosis made her working life a living hell.

🧵👇

telegraph.co.uk/women/life/men…

🔴Dawn Coker was thrust into an early menopause after she was diagnosed with endometriosis and had both her ovaries removed to tackle the pain

✍️"I was working in the finance sector at the time, for a bank, and my job involved frequent travel between my home city of Liverpool and both London and Edinburgh…"

"Doing this while going through the menopause was physically and mentally exhausting," she writes.

🥵"I suffered memory loss that made me feel stupid and had horrific hot flushes on trains and planes"

➡️According to Dawn, her colleagues knew she’d had a medical issue but, because she was a workaholic and was keeping the show on the road, no one fully realised what she was going through

💼Even today, there is "precious little" understanding of the menopause in the workplace, Dawn says, but in the nineties there was "even less"

🪟"All my direct line managers were men, who didn’t fully understand why sometimes I needed to go home early, sit near a window for fresh air or have a fan on my desk"

🗣️"My symptoms were debilitating and embarrassing but I felt I couldn’t speak to anyone, male or female, about what I was going through"

♀️"Menopause comes to every female worker sooner or later. I only hope future generations of women won’t have to suffer in silence like I did."

🔎Read Dawn Coker's full testimony on her struggle with menopause in the workplace here 👇

telegraph.co.uk/women/life/men…