Kaye Adams - STILL HOT!: 42 Brilliantly Honest Menopause Stories

It was the stuff of madness. We were at Heathrow Airport and I could hear my flight being called. I knew Ian and the kids were waiting for me hugely excited at the prospect of a big trip to LA but I just did not want to leave the toilet cubicle . Nothing would have made me happier at that point than if the flight had been cancelled and I could GO HOME. Better still, if I could magically teleport myself there and hide under the duvet until the awful pounding in my chest went away.

I hadnt even needed the loo, I just needed to hide.

Ive never been the kind of person who wanted to hide. I am pretty gobby, by nature.

Panic attacks, anxiety, that heavy weight bearing down on the chest were all alien to me.

Until I hit my fifties.

Actually, the first weird thing to hit me had been a couple of years earlier. Things were going well work-wise. My friend and fellow Loose Women panellist Nadia Sawalha and I had been given a Sunday morning show on ITV and were about to return to Loose Women after a longish break. My radio show was going great guns and I had several other jobs in the offing. Home life was good and the apple of my eye had just entered the frame... my dog, Bea!

But, despite the apparently rosy picture, inexplicably, I felt desperately low in a way I had never experienced before. Depression was once described to me as an absence of joy and that is exactly how it was for four, very flat months. Good things were happening, and objectively, I could see they were good, but I got no kick from them whatsoever.

It was as if I had lost the ability to lift my spirits. When I pushed the joy button, nothing happened and I had no idea why. That it might be connected in some way to the approaching menopause didnt even occur to me despite the fact that my periods were becoming more irregular and out-of-whack. To be absolutely honest, the menopause wasnt even on my radar.

Eventually, the clouds cleared. I breathed a sigh of relief and carried on.

And this is where I have to confess... again, something I only realised in hindsight... that I was (and probably still am) a menopause denier. The word held such negative connotations for me; of a woman who was past her best, over-ripe, surplus to requirements, irrelevant.

Despite having a very open relationship with my mum, she never ever discussed the menopause with me and I was never aware of her going through it. She was also incredibly secretive about her age; she once ended up in a police station for refusing to give her date of birth when she was pulled over for speeding. It clearly rubbed off on me. Deep in my psyche must linger a belief that getting older is a negative thing and the menopause is proof positive of ageing so...

Deny, deny, deny .

Its pathetic really. Who was I trying to kid? I recall being on a skiing holiday with a group of women, perhaps just a couple of years older than me. One night at dinner, in the classic alpine chalet, I struggled to disguise my horror as they all sat fanning themselves with the menus and blowing down their necklines. That will never be me, I vowed.

Deny, deny, deny.

As buttoned up as I was about the menopause, Ms Sawalha was open and honest. She freely described the mood swings, the skin itchiness, the insomnia and the all-round rubbishness of the menopause while I drove her to complete and utter distraction by claiming it wasnt happening to me and that she was being melodramatic as usual. It was largely all in jest, but I could tell she wanted to throttle me at times. You are PERI! (as in perimenopausal), she would scream at me, in frustration. Maybe, but I wasnt going to admit it. The reality was that I didnt have any of the classic menopausal symptoms that tend to get discussed. I never had hot flushes and therefore never had the need to fan myself with the menu and blow down my chest. I didnt suffer from insomnia or achy bones or dry skin or hair loss. I did get a mild version of what I now know to be night sweats but I would simply stick my leg out from under the duvet for some cool air and snooze on. The unfamiliar panic attacks and feelings of anxiety, I pushed to one side.

I hope I did manage to be sympathetic towards Nadia and all the other friends that I spent many hours with, listening to their menopause symptoms. I hope I ooh ed and aah ed in all the right places, despite seldom sharing much of my own experience. In truth, I think that by constantly putting a lid on my emotions and refusing to acknowledge what was happening, I was actually the biggest loser.