Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[GypsyRoseLee]

ToffeeCushion - your FSH levels can be low, but you can still be peri menopausal. My consultant told me so. Her exact words were 'Regardless of your blood tests, your symptoms cannot be denied'.

[Night_Owl]

What frustrates me is that NOT ALL WOMEN experience a bad menopause.

For some it's light flushes that pass in a few weeks/months - then carry on as before.  No obvious "change".  How can that be?  How can we be so different? 

Why do some of us get such a bad deal - are our endocrine systems that dysfunctional that our bodies can't adjust, acclimatise -  no matter how many years pass - so this is the deal we get for the REST of our lives?

In my group of friends/acquaintances, I am the ONLY ONE who has these cr@p meno symptoms and migraines for over 8 years with no end in sight.  It makes me withdraw and feel inadequate by comparison.

Sounding bitter maybe I am - can't help it - robbed!

[GypsyRoseLee]

Looking back I cannot believe how little I knew about peri/menopause.

Like others I assumed my periods would taper off steadily when I turned 50. As I waved my eldest child off to university I would be fanning myself with the other hand, as I had yet another hot flushes. Then my periods would stop completely at which point I would get an over whelming urge to shop in the Classics section at Marks & Spencer and visit garden centre tea rooms. Job done.

But my peri menopause journey started 10 years too soon! I was still wearing jeans from Uniqlo and a leather jacket from All Saints. My youngest child had only just grown out of Peppa Pig and sleeping with a night light on. I still liked to knock back cocktails and snog my husband up against the fridge door.

So WHY was I suddenly afflicted with insomnia? Why was I suddenly too scared to walk through town to meet a friend for coffee? Why was I waking up every morning at 5.30am riddled with anxiety and a feeling of approaching doom?

I genuinely thought I was losing my mind. I thought I was going mad. I couldn't see a bus passing without thinking I could step under it and end all this suffering.

I saw 2 female GPs. Sat in their office, wringing my hands and tearful. Explained how desperately low and frightened I suddenly felt all the time, except (oddly) for about 5-6 days in the middle of the month. Both diagnosed me with clinical depression/anxiety. Even when I tentatively suggested it might be connected to my menstrual cycle, both dismissed that out of hand "You're far too young for any menopausal symptoms"

But I wasn't too young. Obviously I wasn't because my symptoms were real and they didn't arrive with a sell-by date. They were just there. Causing havoc.

It was only after I researched my symptoms on the Internet that I started to connect the dots. I found this place, and immediately found dozens of women who had experiences just like mine. This place gave me the first shred of hope I'd had in months.

I wasn't going mad. I didn't have clinical depression. I was just peri menopausal.

I am meeting friends for coffee later today and I will make a point of (briefly) telling them about my experiences and about this place, and my symptoms and my HRT. Because I can't bear the thought of any of them suffering in silence like I did for so long.

[Greenfields]

Just to add to all the other comments  ... I am still struggling with being blind sided. In my case the mental health symptoms have profoundly impacted my life. I'm still not sure how much is menopause and how much is anything else although I know the stress in my last job probably contributed to my symptoms. I started to write out notes on the side effects and mental states I've been experiencing since taking HRT for the doctor (whom I'm seeing next week) and I'm stunned at how up and down things have been.

I really pray I get better because living off my savings and living in rented accommodation is so precarious.

[CLKD]

I have been lucky.  I had BAD, painful, heavy, clotty periods for years followed by bad PMT.  So I am really glad that any meno symptoms have been short and to the point.

[peegeetip]

Hi Annie

"Having had a hysterectomy years ago with no hot flushes and not arguing with random people I thought I had early onset of dementia and that they hadn't found a terminal illness"

I think you sum up how a lot of us feel (that we have some sort of illness).

However well meaning by saying this is a natural process we go through, I feel that this in many ways reduces the focus and causes confusion in how we understand and treat peri and meno.

It might be easy for some but I truly believe those are a very small minority.
Now most of the recent studies agree that most ladies symptoms will last at least 7 years.

In any other words this is a chronic condition that effects and diminishes people lives and loves.
To ignore it is really not an option anymore, we need to be more understood and empathized with more.
Righting off 7-10 years more when I feel I've wasted a few so far with my symptoms is not an option anymore.

For me I felt ill, looked ill and was worried that I was ill. Until I received the help I needed I was in a bit of a mess.

However the treatment I got upto the point I got my HRT was further blindsiding me, confusing and a waste of my time (and NHS money), at a time when I was very worried, upset and vulnerable.
A horrible mix which put a strain on me and my family.

I feel more confident now and will try to avoid being blindsided ever again.

[CLKD]

Do the GPs feel blind-sided  - shouldn't GPs when they get to a certain stage in their Careers 'go' for menopausal training?

[toffeecushion]

In any other words this is a chronic condition that effects and diminishes people lives and loves.
To ignore it is really not an option anymore, we need to be more understood and empathized with more.
Righting off 7-10 years more when I feel I've wasted a few so far with my symptoms is not an option anymore.

That's fighting talk.  Think we should all write to our gps demanding more understanding.

[CLKD]

Mine is understanding.  In many Specialities the Drugs Companies get GPs/Surgeons/Consultants together and issues are discussed but there probably isn't enough money to be made in menopause 

[CLKD]

Didn't used to be that way because the NHS had to be very careful about where they put their money.  If it wasn't going to benefit everyone then it wasn't bought.  I spent hours arranging such drugs 'does' /dos ……… the NHS was more answerable to it's public in 'those' days 

[peegeetip]

Given that millions still use HRT then there are still millions being made.

I think companies are still smarting from the debates, debacles and denial that have occurred in the past and try and distance themselves from leading GP's on this front.

How that fits in with the push to Statins and the £55 bonus for dementia patients, I have no idea.

 

[GypsyRoseLee]

If peri menopause is a 'natural' process then how come it feels so 'unnatural'.

I honestly felt like my own hormones were poisoning my body. The level of anxiety was so awful that it felt like it could only have been created in a horror laboratory somewhere. The insomnia made my brain feel raw and stripped bare. That horrible thin, grey, wretched feeling accompanied by the chills and diarrhoea felt very unnatural.

Ironically, now I'm on HRT these last few days my body feels like it's returning to its proper 'natural' state. More balanced and harmonious. Working like it 'should'. My body feels like it's MINE again

[Annie0710]

At least during childbirth we have medical professionals taking it seriously and constant monitoring

That's true, at 49 I am still finding it hard for a doctor to even consider menopause let alone help me.

I was 45 when they told me I was peri, I'm now 48 and they're saying I'm post

[honeybun]

The horrible honest truth is....it is a natural process.

Our fertility reduces and then the problems start.

I dont really think I was blind sided. I was aware of my mother having problems. My sister is 13 years older than me and although she never had a menopause lots of her friends did and I was very aware of possible problems.

Maybe the one positive thing is that our generation ....who are so much more aware...can educate our daughters on possible problems. We are the sword bearers and that can only be helpful to those who come after us.

Hopefully we can be honest without scaring the pants off our daughters to be aware of what can happen and the steps they can take.
Things will have moved on ...I'm convinced of that as the next generation really do know what they want and how to get it.


Honeybun
X

[peegeetip]

The honest truth is also that we ignore this chronic condition at our peril.
If we give it a chance it will take our quality of life away.

Reading some of the post on bladder issues this evening has been very upsetting and I'm sure its the same for others who have been affected in this way.
None of whats being discussed on bladder/UTI's seems very "natural" to me.

I agree with Honeybun though, we are in a privileged position to take a stand and change things now.
Lets tell it how its is on peri and meno to our daughters (Its a real B*tch! Naturally )

It was good to hear GypsyRoseLee's story of cocktails and snogging, then suddenly this.
I want to ensure I retain as much of me as I can, as long as possible.

Like Gypsy feeling that its far from a natural process, I too feel the same.
I was ill and feel I'd have been better treated had I been looked at as being ill and not just "natural" put up with it garbage we get fed time and time again.