General Hospital’s Carly is enjoying one of her first truly mature romances with rogue WSB agent Jack Brennan. Her life is changing while the actress who plays her, Laura Wright, has also been going through a life-changing event.
Laura Wright Didn’t Know What Was Happening
Wright was barely out of her teens when she began her soap career on ABC’s Loving in 1991 and has spent almost her entire adult life on daytime. Now, she is experiencing what all women experience as they mature — menopause. She opened up to Women’s World about what she has been going through — and we can ALL relate.
“It was truly debilitating,” Wright said. “I did not just have hot flashes. There was no sleep, being woken up every hour, on the hour with a hot flash that came with a severe anxiety attack attached. At work, I’d have to keep walking offset, thinking I was going to start crying. I had panic attacks and if you asked me what I was afraid of, it was not in my mind. It was all physical.”
The symptoms even made Wright forget her lines, something she is not known for at all.
“I remember doing a scene with Maura West about a year and a half ago and I kept going up — and I don’t go up,” she said, referring to a term used to describe actors missing lines. “I’ve been doing this for a long time, so it takes a lot for me to mess up and not remember a line 10 times in a row!”
Wright Got the Help She Needed
Wright, who takes pride in how active she is and how clean she eats, also experienced menopausal weight gain that can take its toll on both physical and mental health. When she finally decided to see a menopause specialist, she learned she had been in perimenopause for years and had no idea.
“We need way more testing, schooling, and education around this,” she admitted. “Your OB-GYN has had maybe a month of menopause training, because they specialized in being able to bring a baby in the world. They’re incredible, quite frankly, but no one’s bypassing the menopause stage, so to not honor it and treat it as something that is a huge deal is a disservice to all women.”
Don’t forget to watch new episodes of General Hospital each weekday on ABC and weeknight on Hulu.
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