Is Menopause a Chronic Illness?

From the introduction: It's a question I keep coming back to. Is menopause a chronic illness? I don't need a perfect medical definition because I've already lived inside a body that refuses to fit into tidy categories. I'm asking because I know what it feels like when something changes your body and mind and your place in the world is questioned and the system shrugs it off. After my spinal cord injury, I quickly learned that medicine did not always know what to do with a person that didn't fit neatly into a category. What I learned was that I was an exam subject that nobody wanted to understand, treat, or hear. When I began to start seriously thinking about menopause, I discovered something unsettling. When women describe their experiences with healthcare it sounds exactly the same as a disabled person's experience.