Hi Diane,
As sheila99 says, you should be OK coming off after just 5 weeks. Her advice about starting with a lower dose is very sensible. If your body has been post menopausal for 5 years, it is going to be a bit of a shock to suddenly have a relatively large increase in oestrogen.
Some ladies start on too high a dose and experience real anxiety because their body knows something is changing quite quickly. If you want to give HRT a good try, you could start with as low as 12.5mcg (quarter of a patch) and see how that goes with the anxiety. If it goes OK, then you could add another quarter after a few weeks. You might find you only need a small amount to address any issues you are having post menopause.
Alternatively, if you didn't want to cut the patches you could ask for oestrogel and start with half a pump. The mantra is 'low and slow'. It seems arduous, but may get you to where you want to be with HRT.
Re the utrogestan, you could give that a miss for the first month since 12.5mcg oestrogen is so small and unlikely to make too much impact for a few weeks. Taking utrogestan every other night should be OK but it can cause some ups and downs initially until the body gets the message that a pattern of taking the utrogestan has formed.
Many of us have no issues with utrogestan and find it to be calming, especially if taken orally every night.
