Wow! I appreciate the stories and perspective. I guess with my sister being 52 and my mom being late 40s when she had a hysterectomy for extreme bleeding I thought I'd have a few more years.

Frankly, I think this is what was happening to me in March. I went to the gyn for extreme breast pain and they found a lump, so I attributed the pain to that (they eventually found 2 more lumps in my other breast, which they believe all are benign.) I'm thinking now the pain was due to the perimenopause.