hello all. I'm new (will say hello on the newbie thread too). I'm 46 and perimenopausal and have been having a crappy time: hot flushes, night sweats, insomnia, severe depression, brain fog, loss of libido. Basically the whole house of cards. I finally decided to ask for HRT about a month ago, and asked for plant-based transdermal oestrogen and micronised progesterone. My GP is lovely, and though she had to look up the micronised progesterone, she was perfectly willing to prescribe what I wanted. I got estradot and utrogestan, 200mg to be taken days 15-28. The good news is that the HRT definitely works. My moods - which were debilitating 5 days out of 7 - are better, the hot flushes and night sweats have diminished, my sleep is better. I had no bad reaction to the progesterone, either. Not much libido yet but I'm going to a menopause clinic in three weeks and will discuss testosterone gel. But my question is about dosage. I don't have the estradot package with me, but I'm on the lowest dose (from memory I think it's 37 micrograms (?) a day). However after two weeks of happy-go-larryness, things changed. I now have two days of good mood with a new patch, but two days of the terrible, can't-do-anything black mood too. I've tried to alleviate this by keeping the old patch on for 12 hours along with the new patch (a GP friend advised this, though not officially). I'm wary of changing the patch more frequently because even though it's a low dose, I have grade 4 endometriosis - luckily, largely asymptomatic apart from bloating and the odd throbbing - and don't want to exacerbate that. So, estradot women, what do you find works for you? Do you have mood dips too? How do you deal with it? I just don't think that being profoundly depressed 50% of the time is tolerable.
