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When I went to fill up the car this morning, a complete stranger pointed at me to the cashier and exclaimed, “He’s so lucky!”

This confused me, but it materialised they were talking about the menopause. “You will never know what it’s like,” she went on. Then, “Ignore me. I talk too much.”

It wouldn’t have been wise for me to respond at that point, “Actually…” But I could have done, given my life experience with an acute hormone deficiency.

We could quite easily have compared notes on brain fog, irritability, joint pain, bone density, fatigue, muscle mass, weird fat distribution, anxiety and depression, hot flushes, poor concentration and short-term memory problems.

Only, these have been my default from my teens onwards, so is nothing new to me, even with two decades of intermittent treatment.

Who knows, perhaps she was the lucky one, possibly having been fertile for a good quarter of a century, whereas my andropause is permanent. Indeed, you wouldn’t really call it a pause.

Even so, I agree: I’m definitely fortunate. Fortunate to have been bestowed a loving companion who stuck with me despite this diagnosis. For many women, that would have been the final straw.

So yes, I am lucky. Though I do in fact know what it’s like to live with haywire hormones, and all the symptoms which come with it, I’m lucky that it hasn’t defeated me.

I’m lucky I can walk into a petrol station, and a complete stranger can look at me and not think there’s anything wrong with me at all. That’s progress.