While Suzanne Somers was battling breast cancer, she also encountered a very difficult menopause. Somers, 57 and a grandmother of six, discusses her solutions in The Sexy Years: Discover the Hormone Connection.
ON HER MENOPAUSE: I started to experience what I call the Seven Dwarfs of menopause: Itchy, Bitchy, Sweaty, Sleepy, Bloated, Forgetful and All-Dried-Up. An endocrinologist put me on bioidentical hormones [which mimic hormones our bodies produce], and life has been great since. The dwarfs are gone!
ON SEX: Are you kidding? [My husband and manager] Alan [Hamel] would give me that knowing look, and I would think, "Frankly, I'd rather have a smoothie." I was there, but I wanted to be on the same train, and sometimes the train left without me. Now it's like Grand Central Station.
ON MEN AND HORMONE THERAPY: Alan has been on testosterone [also bioidentical] for two years, and he's a different guy.
ON JOHN RITTER'S DEATH: It was a shock. John and I had made peace before his death. I always felt terrible that we weren't speaking, but he called me last year and said, "I forgive you," and I said, "I forgive you too."
ON HER BREAST CANCER: My chart says "No evidence of disease." I'm not off the hook until five years have passed [since the tumor was removed]. That's in a year. I'm feeling well and doing well.
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