Published: 15:03 BST, 7 August 2026 | Updated: 15:03 BST, 7 August 2026
For three years, Gwen Luscombe dreaded the same two or three nights every month.
She'd wake in the early hours drenched. Her hair would be damp against her neck, her pyjamas soaked through and the sheets clammy beneath her. Sometimes, she would strip the bed. Other nights, she would quietly move to the spare room, where she had already laid a towel across the mattress, hoping not to wake her wife.
'It got to the point where I knew it was always the day before my period,' she tells the Daily Mail. 'I'd think, "Tomorrow night's going to be bad."'
At first, it seemed like one more unwelcome part of getting older. As a woman in her mid-40s, Gwen assumed night sweats were simply the beginning of perimenopause.
After trying to manage the symptoms with the contraceptive pill without much success, they decided the next step was a Mirena IUD,Ā a hormone-releasing contraceptive device inserted into the uterus, to regulate her cycle.
Before she left the appointment, though, her doctor asked one more question.
Had she ever had a mammogram? That one seemingly offhand question saved Gwen's life.
For three years, Gwen Luscombe (pictured) suffered severe night sweats in the days before her period. At first she put the symptoms down to perimenopauseĀ
For Gwen, life on Victoria's Mornington Peninsula revolved around family and the flexibility that came with working for herself.
After moving to Australia from upstate New York in 2001, she eventually settled on the coast with her wife and their young son, building a career as a freelance food and travel writer.
Apart from the occasional skin check, Gwen had never had a significant health scare. So when the night sweats started in her mid-40s, she assumed they were another sign that she was getting older.
Every month, just before her period, Gwen knew what was coming. Friends suggested bamboo pyjamas. She bought them; they didn't help.
'It wasn't just hot,' she says. 'I was literally waking up with damp hair. All under my neck was wet.'
To avoid stripping the bed in the middle of the night, she started sleeping in the spare room on the worst nights, lying a towel across the mattress so she could simply throw it in the wash the next morning.