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I appreciate thoughtful replies on what can be an argumentative topic.

The woman I'm talking about was 31 at the time of her last pregnancy. If I'm not mistaken, a hysterectomy leads to immediate menopause and most doctors won't perform one just because the uterus is "worn out" at that age. Usually there has to be another reason such as cancer or growths. I'm not trying to shoot down all your arguments. They're good ones. I just think that there are cases where they don't apply.

As to the other - where do we draw the line between a healthy functioning system and one that needs help? My hormonal balance is off. Always has been. I've been assured this won't cause any problems having children but in the meantime, untreated, it makes my life miserable to an extent that I would not call my cycles healthy or normal. I'm not sure I see a difference between my problem and my brother's, except that his was obvious enough that people understood something was wrong, while mine took three years for me to get a doctor to take seriously enough to help. In the meantime it affected my health, mental wellbeing, and interactions with people.

I can see the arguments for NFP. I've read them before. They don't entirely convince me, for one because while they talk about being usable by women with irregular cycles I think they misunderstand some of the difficulties there - it's not that I think it's to predict the date of ovulation, it's that the ovulation signs each month can be horribly out of whack. I've met people it works very well for.

As I understand it (again, I'm no gynecologist) if the ovaries are removed at the time of hysterectomy then you will have an immediate menopause. But if you have a hysterectomy and your ovaries are left intact then they can keep functioning for many years and keep producing estrogen (and a smaller amount of testosterone), unless they fail due to the blood supply being cut off when the uterus was removed. (Sometimes happens, sometimes doesn't, depending on how they do the surgery.) Women having a hysterectomy are often offered HRT, which has become controversial recently because of the amounts or the types or the ratios of hormones given; but if it's done right, hormone replacement would be a very good thing, it seems to me.

"I'm not sure I see a difference between my problem and my brother's..."

I don't, either. If you have a hormone deficiency, you need hormone replacement or supplementation of some sort to function normally and feel right.

I hope you can get the treatment you need. Struggling with this for years has been no picnic, I'm sure.