Hi Steemians,

This is a translation of my post in French.
I am Christel and I live in France on an island called Corsica.

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I really want to reach a lot of people, so writing in English is better.

I decided to tell you part of my story, to publish what I had already written a little more than two years ago with the secret hope of one day writing a book, just to share. With the secret hope, also, to help, even if only a couple, and perhaps also my children, so that they know their story.

To do this, we have to start again at the beginning of my story; or rather at the beginning (but I didn't know it yet) of hell, or what looks like it.
I was twenty years old and yet I remember it as if it were yesterday, as if it were engraved with a red iron.
My aunt Lina had gotten me an appointment with a great Marseilles gynaecologist when I should have waited several months without her intervention.
The day arrived. It was a Monday. I was going, a little nonchalantly, to this meeting in the framework of an amenorrhea which had lasted for the past two years.

That was the first doctor I've seen. (The doctor B.)

I walk into the office and the gynaecologist does not invite me to sit down. He also stays up, as if to show that his time is precious and that he has only a short time to devote to me. He then asks me to present my BS (blood test) which I give him.

He'll just take five minutes to consult it and tell me dryly, without any sympathy, without donning gloves,

you're pre-menopausal (early), you want kids?

Still standing up, feeling my legs sneaking away, I answer him completely frightened, that I'm only twenty-two years old and have no serious lovers, so I don't have an immediate plan to have a baby. But while my girlfriends have always dreamed of Prince Charming and a wedding dress like those of the princesses, since as long as I can remember, I’ve dreamed of a baby, of a family.
Are you sure?? You didn't even examine or question me...

That this is not necessary--that I would soon be menopausal and that when I would like to have a child, I should be treated and treated well.

Contrary to what my parents, family, friends, and best friend would have imagined, it didn't destroy me.

I quickly denied the diagnosis, even though it came from one of Marseille's greatest gynaecologists. I didn't care, he was wrong.
I had then heard of a woman gynaecologist, who specialized in "difficult, special cases."
Without hesitation, I was getting an appointment, as fast as possible.

That was the second doctor I've seen. (The doctor H.)

I walk into her dark office, from where an almost unbearable smell of tobacco is emitted!
I quickly understand that I'm not mistaken because I am sitting on her desk, in the middle of a pile of files, an ashtray full of cigarette butts... normal in a gynaecologist!
I give her the same blood test and tell her that I am here because Dr. B.--the famous Doctor B.--assumed that this was the result of early menopause.

She consults the assessment for a long time, then questions me at length, both on my antecedents and my life course.
She was also the doctor of my first cousin, Marie-Ange, to whom I was very close and who had an incurable disease, so she already knew a little bit about the difficult situation we were going through.
After gathering and confronting all these elements, she says to me:

You have psychogenic amenorrhea!

But did Dr. B. say it was menopause? Are you sure about that?

I only have one case in my thousands of files, why would you be the second? You have suffered too many major psychological shocks and your body reacts in its own way.

So it was transitory and everything went back to normal.
I came out feeling reassured by her diagnosis, or rather, convinced. I was in my second year of nursing school at that time, so I had the "skills/knowledge" needed to understand everything that was happening to me, to analyze both diagnoses.
I didn't seek to find out more or ask for a third opinion, since I was far too reassured by the second diagnosis! All the more so as a few months later, everything had gone back to normal and I thought that she was right and that the great gynaecologist was wrong!

The years that followed happened almost normally, with a few months of amenorrhea time, but nothing that worried the famous gynaecologist.

I met my ex-husband with whom I would stay for five years, during which time I would hardly ever take any contraceptives, and yet never got pregnant.
Then I went through a somewhat complicated separation at the age of twenty-seven, and finally met the man of my life, @irishcoffee. I say “finally met,” but we had already known each other for ten years.
About three years later, we decided to start a family and to have a child--even three or four for me, even if we disagreed on the subject...

After a year of successive failures, hopes and disappointments, I decided to consult a gynaecologist on my own at first. The problem was, we were now living in Corsica, I didn't know the reputation of doctors, and I didn't have much choice anyway.

So I chose the doctor who offered me the fastest, rather "excited" appointment, telling me that if we couldn't make it on our own, a little help would do the trick.

In order to save time, he asked that I have my GP prescribe a blood test. One of the first violent shocks linked to my journey was this one.
I was running a laboratory that I knew well, but when I got the results back from the secretary, who is a girlfriend, she told me that the boss would like to talk to me.
I was surprised. However, he wasn’t there, so she asked me if I could wait about two hours before I could talk to him. Those two hours were endless, imagining a thousand and one things he could have told me.
Finally, the hour arrived. He told me by phone that there had to be an error on my balance sheet and that he would like me to come back tomorrow for a new sample.

He said too much and not enough. I wasn't gonna wait till tomorrow to find out he was the problem.

He seemed to say that a mix-up of the samples may have occurred, but he didn't explain to me what made him say that, and was very evasive in his remarks. I wouldn't know any more than that, and I should wait until the next day.
I didn't sleep that night and showed up the next day.
He explained to me that it was surprising that there had been a mistake, but the results of my blood work were extremely surprising. Surprising!?! But in what way? My estrogen and progesterone levels were those of a sixty-year-old woman!

I understood in a second (and you probably understand it too), that there was no mistake. My assessment at thirty years old was within the norms of a sixty-year-old woman...
One second later, I thought it's not possible, that Dr. B. couldn't be right.
And the third second, I burst into tears, fleeing in a hurry from the laboratory to run and take refuge in my man's arms. When I think about it today, because I never went back, he must have wondered what was going on?!?

Suddenly, my excitement of the appointment had subsided, with a sudden flashback to the day of the first diagnosis with the doctor B!

That was the third doctor I've seen.

The day of my appointment finally arrived and I was greeted by a female gynaecologist, who at first sight had largely exceeded the retirement age, in a practice that had remained frozen, including the auscultation table, in the 1980s! 😃

I remember perfectly well thinking to myself: go quickly, run away, what is this place, or is this Hidden Camera?!?
I explained my entire journey to her, with as much detail as I am giving you today. I presented my last blood test and told her several times that we have been trying in vain for the past year to have a child, and then told her my anecdote with the laboratory.

She’d ended the consultation by telling me,"Come back in a year and take your temperature every day”.

I really wondered what I had come here to do, and understood that I only had to choose the next gynaecologist from the list or listen to my general practitioner who suggested that I go to an endocrinologist.

This I did, because it was impossible for me to wait several months for an appointment with the gynaecologist, whom I was advised unanimously to consult.

That was the fourth doctor I've seen. (The doctor P.)

The wait for the endocrinologist seemed endless to me even though the appointment was only a week later.

I’ve already told you too much. But to make you feel what I might have felt, you’ll have to wait a long week until you find out what happens next.

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Thank you for the corrections and help of @lenadr, @discordiant...
Thank you very much.

Goodbye Steemian friends.

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