Veteran actress Halle Berry opened up about her premenopause struggles during a recent appearance on The Drew Barrymore Show. The 58-year-old, while promoting her Respin menopause community, told the host that sex felt like “razor blades” during that period.
The Oscar winner’s Respin company produces products including a lubricant for women finding themselves in situations of such nature.
“When I was 54, I had just met Van,” Berry started, per Metro. “I manifested this man, and we were having the best time. I finally met my person. It was amazing. It really, truly was amazing.
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“One morning, I tried to go to the bathroom. I couldn’t go. It was so painful when I tried to let a little bit out, I couldn’t go. I had to squeeze it. It took me almost 10 minutes to just empty my bladder because it was so painful,” she added.
“Substances were down there that I had never seen before and I thought, ‘What is this?’” The Monster’s Ball star said she swiftly sought medical attention from a doctor, but he gave her an incorrect herpes diagnosis.
“Van, he drove me there because this [her private area] was so swollen, I couldn’t even put my legs together to drive,” she recalled. “We spent the next 72 hours doing the blame game, trying to figure out who gave it to me, who gave it to him…
“And then a couple of hours after that, my doctor called me and said: ‘You do not have herpes.’ I was like, ‘Okay then, what is it?’ And this was the defining moment for me, he said, ‘I don’t know, that’s what it looked like.’”
Berry being misdiagnosed by the doctor ultimately spurred her to investigate her medical condition. She eventually established she was experiencing vaginal dryness, a common premenopausal symptom.
“I had all the symptoms of what that felt like,” the Die Another Day star said, adding that it made it tough to have sex with her boyfriend Van Hunt. “I did have about six months or seven months [where] we struggled with finding a way to have sex again, getting rid of the dryness, making it more enjoyable because it got pretty rough for a minute.”
Barrymore then chimed in and labeled the feeling as “sandpaper.” Berry went a step further and described it as “razor blades.”
Per Mayo Clinic, perimenopause “means ‘around menopause’ and refers to the time during which your body makes the natural transition to menopause, marking the end of the reproductive years.”
READ ALSO: Halle Berry hits back at comments over her inability to ‘keep a man’ after three divorces
