If men went through menopause there’d never be HRT shortages – I refuse to suffer in silence, says Corrie’s Lisa George
THERE was a point last month when something inside Lisa George snapped.
Three years into a challenging menopause journey, she was told the progesterone she needs as part of her hormone replacement therapy was out of stock — with no indication of when it might become available.
The Corrie actress, 52, shared her dismay in an Instagram post and said refused to “suffer in silence”.
The response from female followers and fellow menopausal women showed Lisa was far from alone in being left without vital supplies.
Lisa, who plays larger-than-life Beth Sutherland on the soap, says: “When women are not getting access to the HRT they need, that gets my goat. Half the population will go through the menopause and some of us are really struggling with it.
“To say there’s no stock . . . I was absolutely raging.
“If it was men who had the menopause, this wouldn’t be happening.”
HRT is used by around two million women and aims to restore the hormone levels that menopause depletes.
Women like Lisa need to counter the oestrogen they take with a dose of progesterone to protect them from the risk of cancer.
But over the past year, the UK has suffered a shortage of HRT meds with no clear explanation.
A pharmacist saw Lisa’s post, got in touch and she now has access to the medication.
But it was the latest hurdle in an ongoing battle.
The menopause hit Lisa when she was taking part in the 2020 series of Dancing On Ice, a challenge she accepted after deciding to push herself out of her comfort zone for her 50th birthday that year.
Although the audience never knew the turmoil she was in, away from the cameras the brain fog and hot flushes were often debilitating and meant her experience on the ITV show was tough.
She recalls: “It was the worst time for me to do it with the flipping menopause starting. Oh my god, I thought it was a mental breakdown. It nearly killed me. Mentally and physically, it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done and with my bodily mechanics going up the spout, it added far more stress on me than I’d ever anticipated.
“I’m glad I did it, but it was a bittersweet experience.”
Lisa and her pro partner Tom Naylor got to week seven but her symptoms became so severe that she had time off filming Corrie.
HRT has since curbed the “unbearable” hot flushes but the brain fog and itchy skin remain.
She says: “Brain fog makes me do the most ridiculous things that I could just slap myself around the face for.
“I get a really itchy back, so I have two back scratchers in my house, one downstairs and one upstairs.
“In the middle of the night it will not stop itching and it drives me mental.”
This summer, Grimsby-born Lisa will mark 12 years on Corrie.
Having only been contracted for two episodes, she never expected her light-hearted cameo as Steve McDonald’s ex to develop into a permanent role.
But a few weeks after filming, she got the phone call that would change her life.
Bosses loved what she had done with Beth and wanted to meet for lunch to discuss future storylines.
Lisa says: “I thought, ‘Well, as long as they’re paying’ because by then I was back on the dole.
“I remember my mum got me a new dress to go to this really posh restaurant and I honestly didn’t know what was going to come of it.
“We ended up having an absolute scream over that lunch. They said they had loved the character and had been looking for a sort of hybrid of Janice Battersby and Ivy Tilsley and thought I was a good fit.”
She adds: “It’s so weird because I had this list on my fridge of things that I wanted in my life and my No1 was ‘big fat TV job’.
“I also had a house and a car upgrade on there and I’ve ticked both of them off as well. I still haven’t got a dog, which was another one, but I couldn’t really with the hours I do.”
When asked what has kept her there for so long, Lisa says: “The non-principled answer is that I’ve got a mortgage.
“I have got bills to pay and I need a roof over my head.
“But seriously, I don’t know where that time has gone.
“Never in a million years did I envisage I’d stay this long. But I just go with the flow.”
It is testament to Lisa that Beth has become part of the fabric of the Street and it is hard to imagine Weatherfield without her.
Beth and Kirk — who tied the knot in 2015 during an Eighties-themed wedding with them dressed as Madonna and Adam Ant — are one of the soap’s most-loved couples.
Lisa says she has huge fun with Beth’s outrageous wardrobe and loves getting away with wearing things she’d never dare to in real life.
She says: “I go out of my way to make her look like that, so it’s almost like my invention of her style. I want her to be Eighties Madonna because she hasn’t really grown up.
“I’m always looking for rah-rah skirts to get that Desperately Seeking Susan vibe and I really enjoy that.”
Over the next month, visitors to Salford’s Media City, where Corrie is filmed, might spot Lisa pacing the site in between scenes as she works to get her steps in for Prostate Cancer UK’s March The Month challenge.
She’s joining people across the country to walk 11,000 steps a day throughout next month to represent the 11,000 men who die of prostate cancer in the UK every year.
It’s a cause especially close to Lisa’s heart after several members of her family, including her dad Kenneth, were diagnosed with the disease.
She says: “I’m so happy to be involved because I’d no idea just how common it was — one in eight men will be diagnosed with it at some stage and it can often be symptom-free. That was shocking to me.”
Kenneth, now 77, was one of the lucky ones.
His cancer was picked up after he requested a check on his prostate-specific antigen levels during a routine diabetic review, knowing that his brother and father had previously been diagnosed.
He went on to make a full recovery following a robotic-assisted radical prostatectomy — surgery to remove the prostate and some of the tissue surrounding it.
Lisa adds: “My dad’s had his levels checked recently and they are 0.1 to 1 now — the normal range for his age group is up to 6.5 and so that is bloody brilliant. Just amazing.”
- Lisa is taking on Prostate Cancer UK’s March The Month challenge in March. Sign up today at marchthemonth.prostatecanceruk.org