Menopause Matters Forum
Menopause Discussion => All things menopause => Topic started by: Sarah_74 on August 26, 2021, 10:09:40 AM
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Hi. I have been suffering perimenopause for 3 yrs. Docs prescribed antidepressants, but they made me feel awful, and i didnt want them! GP wasn't really interested. I have struggled on and my symptoms ( hot flushes, anxiety, severe joint pain etc). I self referred to menopause clinic. The doctor fobbed me off with printouts, told me i had severe symptoms and told me to go back to my GP. I just feel that no one's bothered.
I dont know whether to go for hrt or herbal.
Thanks
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Although I’m now trying to get stable with hrt, I started working with Claire Snowdon- Darling at
https://balancedwellness.co.uk/
in 2018 and she has helped me through my perimenopause journey. Definitely worth looking at her website. There’s a free symptom assessor on it and lots of other resources.
I actually had one to one consultations with her - mainly virtually but occasionally in person as I live a little way away.
Worth a look anyway.
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GPs seem 2 have little empathy unless married to a woman of 'our age' ::). Was the 'doctor' at the Clinic a Gynaecologist by any chance as they don't know much more than GPs seem to!
Some find that keeping a mood/food/symptom diary of use to chart progress. Have a lookC at the surgery web-page to see if there is a GP interested in women's health, mine certainly is. It was he that diagnosed my VA for example.
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:love: :love:I had the same experience....my Dr put me on antidepressants and I was a thousand times worse, I decided myself to come off them....then I went to 2 other drs before I was being listened to and understood. Thankfully this Dr put me on hrt and I feel so much better! I had to insist and I think you need to as well for your own well being... I told the Dr that I couldn't carry on like that.... thankfully hrt is working for me, some days I feel bit grumpy but nothing like before...please insist at the drs...Good luck to you...
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4 years ago I first went to my GPs about this and got a young male locum. In the end they just started on one symptom (bloating) and ended up down the route of checking if it was Ovarian Cancer or not (it wasn't).. no further contact from the doctors since then, I was forgotten.
I've not been to the doctors since then as I was so disillusioned but due to symptoms worsening I had to go back last week. It turns out that in my area we can fill in a form online to say what are symptoms are and there was a button for "HRT and menopause" so I tried that, got a call back and then an offer to go in from the (female) Nurse Practitioner and she was so helpful and prescribed me HRT plus blood tests just incase there was anything else going on.
So I think that answer is just to persist but it's so frustrating that a lot of doctors still don't understand menopause :(
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I would say to anyone to try and get HRT ASAP and not leave it until your estrogen levels crash so low, I wish I'd started in my late 40s in peri I'm now trying to replace diminished levels. My Menopause specialist is doing this and I think it is the way to go....