Hi,
Have any of your ladies, been on HRT, had trouble with it not suiting etc, come off and waited a few weeks, to see what sypmtoms you actually experience?
This is me. Two and half years ago, sypmtoms began - hot flushes, anxiety, insomnia etc. I was prescribed oestrogel and utrogestan which got rid of the flushes, but not alot else, plus it was a faff to apply and dry. Then changed to 75mg patches. Again flushes went, sleep still poor and worse still BLEEDING!
Fast foward to now. Private specialist prescribed Evorel Conti, thinking lower oestrogen and different progesterone may solve the bleeds. Within 2 days, I wanted to kill someone and felt very edgy. Patch ripped off an in the bin. Went with no HRT for a week, no flushes, but started to feel jittery and anxious. So, have put my old 75 patch back on and don't feel that great today either. A bleed is probably on the cards now!
What I really want to do, is go cold turkey for three months, to see how I feel.
BUT then I remember the symptoms of 2019 and it was grim. I could barely drive or walk in a straight line. Now I can drive (just about) and can do a basic job, but I am not where I want to be.
I have no clue what I am doing any longer, every day is different and I am an idiot for chopping and changing doses and regimes. At one point, I did up the patch to 100mg (thinking it would help my sleep) but the pain in my tummy was not nice, so that idea was quicky abandoned.
What I really want, is to ride the storm and be alive at the end. But I have teen kids and will be working til I drop.
I suppose the next step if I bleed, is to ask for a different progesterone, but MS said I must give Conti 4 weeks. That is my entire summer break ruined if I do that ( I work in a special needs school).
What do I do lovely people?
Hi Nas, I'm having exactly the same thoughts at the moment.
After so many months of struggle with HRT, I'm starting to be really tired of this and also constantly wondering if I'm actually making things better or worse with it.
My symptoms before I started HRT were hot flushes and insomnia, also some dryness, but that I was able to treat with topical products.
Flushes are gone and insomnia better, but there are other symptoms which really wear me down and I'm not sure if these are meno symptoms due to own hormones decreasing or actually caused by my body not being able to tolerate increased doses of HRT and/or the fluctuations caused by transdermal dosing. My worst symptom over the past months has been, and continues to be bad anxiety and panicky feelings and these seem to persist no matter what I try with HRT.
This all started in Spring when I had a bleed after several months and I felt my own hormones were crashing down so I was advised by gynae to up the gel dose. I tried and tried and it just got worse, suddenly my body couldn't tolerate the gel and I was getting bad rushes/surges after each dose.
Finally, switched to patch with the hope of getting a more stable dose, but unfortunately the same continued. Also with patch I experienced the rush and felt I was absorbing too quickly, then dose wearing off too fast. All in all, I just didn't get on with it.
I've stopped the patch yesterday and at least feeling somewhat better after doing that. I decided that I will try to go back to the original regime which I had and which worked for a while (only 1 pump Estrogel). It has occurred to me that perhaps the symptoms I had in spring were actually not caused by low oestrogen but were something else and all my attempts to increase estrogen have actually just made things worse. Not sure if this is the case, but I reached the point that I could not continue with higher doses any longer. I will speak with gynae next week and as an alternative, we may try low dose oral.
It is tempting, though, to take a break from HRT and see what the actual symptoms are and then decide how to move on and perhaps come back to it after things have settled. But at the same time the realist in me tells that probably the symptoms could be even worse, as surely my meno has progressed during the past year and I would not come back to the situation I was last year August, with still relatively mild symptoms.
The only advice I could give to you Nas is that keep in touch with your gynae/meno specialist and consider all alternatives. Then try to stick with the selected one at least couple of weeks. I've often heard it being said that one should keep the regime 3 months, but it sounds excessively long time if there is no improvement. Personally I'm thinking I'd know within couple of weeks if the direction is better or worse. And then if better, keep going until 3 mo to see it if settles.
Hope you will find a solution soon and let us know how you get on!!
xxx
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Topic: Re setting the body and starting again? (Read 2939 times)