Stephanie Waring "screamed and begged" for help after being diagnosed as perimenopausal.
Hollyoaks star Stephanie Waring opens up about her shock diagnosis
The 45-year-old actress - who has Mia, 17, and 12-year-old Lexi with former partner Dan Hooper but is now engaged to Tom Brookes- was struggling so much as her body made the transition into menopause that she "couldn't cope" and believed that death would be the only way to relieve her pain.
She told The Sun: "I was crying all the time. I came home one day and my partner was out and my kids, Mia, who’s 17, and Lexi, who is 12, were with their dad. And I just remember being on the bathroom floor screaming and begging someone to help me. The doctors were saying they couldn’t do anything at that point and I couldn’t cope any more. I didn’t want to harm myself but I just remember thinking maybe not being here would be the only way to make it stop."
The 'Hollyoaks' star went on to add that her symptoms started around the time she had started a new relationship and explained that even though it should have been a "really happy time" for her, she ended up losing sleep over her health for almost a year before seeking medical help."
She added: "I got the first symptoms around the same time I got into a relationship with my now-fiancé Tom Brookes, who is a security consultant, in December 2020. t should’ve been a really happy time but I was going into the other bedroom at night because I couldn’t sleep. Nearly every night for a whole year I’d be awake until around 3am. Nothing I did helped. I was suffering from brain fog and I was just exhausted all of the time. My vision also started to go and that’s when I thought, ‘Something’s not right here’.”
Stephanie - who has played the role of Cindy Cunningham on 'Hollyoaks' on and off since 1998 - was given a number of options including HRT but eventually opted for a Mirena coil, which releases progesterone, and an oestrogen gel, which is applied to the skin, but found that her anxiety went "through the roof" and wondered how her new partner put up with her.
She said: ": “I was explosive. I’d never been like it before but I would see the red mist over the smallest things. I honestly don’t know how Tom put up with me. Now he calls the coil the devil!My anxiety was through the roof, sleep never came and I started to experience this itching sensation all over my skin. It would jump from place to place and it felt like I had bugs crawling all over me. It’s called pruritus and it was the most debilitating thing. I went to see another specialist and once again, I was told to up my oestrogen."
After having a breakdown on the set of the Channel 4 soap, bosses referred Stephanie to a specialist who discovered exactly what the problem was.“I told her it was my hormones and explained what had been happening.
She explained: "The first assistant director, Jo, took me into a room and asked me what was going on. She then told me about a specialist she knew called Dr Michael Barnish, and together they may have saved my life. After a second consultation I was finally diagnosed with oestrogen dominance.”
"I basically had this soup of oestrogen running around my body that had set off my mast histamine cells.
"So I was giving myself more oestrogen and my progesterone wasn’t having a chance to clear it all — that’s what it does, it clears all your mast cells.
"So me being constantly told to up my dosage was causing the problems. I should’ve been given a very low dose of oestrogen and monitored closely.
"The dosage should only have been increased if I began to experience other menopause symptoms along with the lack of sleep. The higher dosage caused me to have symptoms I would never have experienced otherwise.”
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