Halle Berry is sharing her experience with getting a diagnosis for perimenopause, which her doctors initially mistook for herpes. On Monday, the Oscar winner, 57, appeared at A Day of Unreasonable Conversation, a summit hosted by social impact agency Propper Daley in Los Angeles. According to , during a conversation with First Lady Jill Biden about women’s health, Berry discussed her own experience along with her perimenopause symptoms—specifically, the pain she felt during sex.
When she told a doctor about her discomfort, Berry recalled, “He said, ‘You have the worst case of herpes I’ve ever seen. I’m like, ‘Herpes? I don’t have herpes!’” After she and her partner, Van Hunt, got tested for the viral infection, she said their results were negative.
As a quick refresher: Perimenopause refers to the time menopause starts, and most of the people experience it between the ages of 40 and 44. The most typical symptoms, per the Mayo Clinic, include vaginal dryness, which might make sex painful (as Berry described), hot flashes, and mood swings—but nobody test or symptom can determine for those who’ve entered perimenopause, which is why it’s often easily misdiagnosed.
Now, Berry hopes to boost awareness about what menopause can feel like and tips on how to get the right care for its symptoms. Berry ended her conversation with the First Lady by urging the audience to “help us change the way culture views women at this stage of our lives.”
And there’s another misconception about menopause that Berry desired to clear up: “We’re not exactly at the end. We’re sitting up here, two women who are clearly down the path of life—we are not done. We’re just getting started in our next act.”
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