'I'm 29 and I look 29... but my body feels like I'm 70. My youth has been stolen from me'

Angelina suffers from symptoms that usually blight a woman at least twenty years older

Angelina Hardy-Taylor had just been diagnosed with breast cancer when the nurse asked her if she'd thought about having children.

"I was an absolute mess," she says. "I'd just had this horrendious diagnosis. My partner was wondering if I was going to die. And I was being asked to think about children in the same appointment."

The couple, 26 at the time in November 2021, were put on the spot. Her cancer - caught early in stage one, but aggressive - was hormone-fed, meaning that having estrogen and progesterone in her body could increase the risk of its return after it was removed. There was hardly a choice.

In February 2022, Angelina was put into a medically-induced menopause to stem her hormone production. Her tumour was removed - successfully - and she had chemotherapy to further reduce the risk of the cancer coming back.

By September, she'd left the oncology ward. But the menopause was not going away.

Three years on, Angelina still suffers from the daily symptoms that usually blight a woman at least 20 years her senior. But because of the cancer risk, unlike a woman of 50 who hasn't had cancer, she can't take any hormone replacers to help with her struggles.

"I look like a 29 year old," says Angelina, from Mansfield. "But inside, internally, I feel 70, if not older on some days. It all feels wrong inside. It doesnt quite match up. I find it difficult to look in the mirror because I see myself as a 29 year old but feel much older. I feel like my youth has been stolen from me."

Technically, the induced menopause could be reversed at any time. She takes pills daily and has injections monthly to keep the hormones at bay.

But it'll have been a decade by the time the next steps are even considered - by which time she'll be 36. Having children of her own is a fading dream.

"I had really frank conversations with my partner and my family and we unfortunately came to the conclusion that it's most likely not going to happen," she explains. "That was a really difficult conversation.

"I actually told my partner at the time that if he wanted to have children he should leave me and find a healthy young woman. I didn't want to deny him the chance just because I had been and have it steal his future as well as mine. I told him to not let me hold him back. But he's been with me the whole way and been really supportive throughout it all.

"I do think about it a lot. It's hard not to. Most of my friends and most people I know are planning for children or already have them. It does make me feel sad. When you grow up, you don't expect a diagnosis of breast cancer. You automatically think having a child is going to be nice, easy decision between you and your partner that you don't even think much about.

"But the reality of it is that so many women do sturggle. Now being faced with my own fertility issues, you do kind of realise how taboo it is to talk about it. It's something no-one really wants to talk about. It's lovely seeing women have children and people starting a family and it's amazing and I'm so happy for my family members and friends who get to have children because I can be there for them and support them and be really happy for them.

"But it does make you look at your own situation with sadness knowing that that's most likely not going to happen for you and it does make you kind of re-evaluate how you feel like a woman. It changes your perspective."

Symptoms of her menopause include bone pain and joint pain, "from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to sleep". There's also the hot flushes, which can come on at anytime - and have done, when she's on the shop floor at her workplace, Boots in the St. Peter's Retail Park in her hometown.

"I'll be on the shop floor talking to a customer and be normal, and look like a normal girl in her 20s," she explains. "Then I will have the most horrendous hot flush out of nowhere and be dripping with sweat. I get confused looks from customers as they don't expect it from someone of my age.

"That's when the conversation starts. They'll say: 'Oh, you look really young, you can't be in the menopause.' I have to explain it to them. I'll tell them that there's plenty of other women out there who don't fit into the normal menopausal category. But we are here unfortunately."

The lack of help and support for someone going through an early menopause was too glaring to bare for the now 29-year-old. It just so happened that her workplace was the ideal starting block for change.

Boots is partnering with Macmillan Cancer Support for October's Menopause Awareness Month to raise awareness of the early menopause. One in four women under the age of 50 with cancer experience early menopause as a result of the cancer or its treatment.

With Angelina's help and input, the campaign has involved recruiting and training "Information Pharmacists" and "Beauty Advisors" to provide support and advice on the high street for women going through cancer and the early menopause. The company has also launched a dedicated information hub online for those wanting to learn more about the early menopause.