When Jo Caminiti began experiencing mood swings, low energy and loss of sleep, she did not know what was happening to her. The 58-year-old worked as an environmental scientist in a job she loved, but often found herself crying while driving to work. Soon after, she began experiencing severe joint pain, and was struggling to walk, so she decided to take seven months off work on long service leave. "I thought I had some weird inflammatory thing going on in my body … I didn't know what it was.
"It became my permanent state where I felt like the morning you wake up with the flu, where you've got no energy, everything hurts, and you can barely move." Ms Caminiti, who lives in rural Cowwarr, 175 kilometres east of Melbourne, saw multiple GPs, but none could diagnose her problem, instead referring her to a rheumatologist. With no remedy in sight, Ms Caminiti returned to work, but was told several months later that her position had been made redundant. It wasn't until she saw a news program on perimenopause that things clicked for her and she was suddenly filled with hope