PERIOD. END OF STORY?

A little-known cause of early menopause is extreme stress. One woman reflects on the family crisis that shocked her world, and then her body, to the core.

- Kira von Eichel

I knew a woman whose family fled the Soviet Union in 1985, when she was 7. At the train station just before the border, her mother was taken into custody by Soviet guards. In the 24 hours they held her mother, a circle of hair from the child's scalp simply fell out. Her mother was released, they made it to Italy, and by the time they had settled in Baltimore, her hair had grown back. The story always stayed with me. What the fear of losing her mother will do to the child's body in a matter of hours.

In my case, it was the inverse. I was in my early 40s when, out of the blue, we had a very sick child. I didn't lose my hair all at once, but my body changed, almost overnight. We went from being a normal enough family to one in a constant state of crisis. I spent hours every day filling out forms in waiting rooms, arguing with arrogant doctors and insurance companies, pleading with kindly ones, alternating all-night vigils with my husband. I became a desperate comber of articles, medical papers, and blogs. I arranged meetings with friends of friends (of friends) who might have a lead; anything to grab hold of some invisible steering wheel that would give us the illusion of control.

My husband and I were like harried army medics, and as nothing upon nothing worked, the wonderful us we had been just faded into two exhausted housemates who happened to share children. Mounting terror and disagreement slowly calcified into resentment. I tried to keep dates with friends, and if I made it to the appointed place at the appointed time, I tried not to cry. And often failed. The best people stuck around, but many others fell away.