The day after my 38th birthday, I went into menopause. Surgical menopause. Four years after healing from cancer, and two years after losing my mother, it was time to put into action the plan that my healthcare team, my husband, and I had decided after my first mastectomy: when I was finished nursing my daughter, I would remove my left breast, ovaries, and tubes. This was something in my mother’s final weeks that she also asked of me. She had fought breast cancer. Her mot