Hello everyone, so grateful that this platform exists, I shall try not to ramble on. Started getting flushes age 47 at end of 2014. Eventually realised I was peri-menopausal and started Nutrition-Fx supplements in 2015. These worked perfectly for quite a while: started on lowest dose then upped it when sweats came back. However, last year it was as if a switch had been flicked and my body (and mind) just seemed to go mental. Waking up and just sobbing, or raging, can't remember anything, the smallest task seeming mountainous, aches and pains, all the usual stuff... I was initially interested in bio-identical hormones, but couldn't afford the price for the more well-known practitioners and was concerned about the risks of getting it from unregulated pharmacies, so got Evorel Sequi patches from my (spectacularly unknowledgable and unhelpful)GP. These worked on my flushes at first, but they crept back a bit, and then I developed dreadful cystic acne ( would this be caused by the progesterone?). I took the Evorel for six months but found the acne devastating and my mood extremely low, so I stopped it. Since reading on this site, I have realised that body-identical hormones (Oestrogel, Utrogestan?) are available on the NHS, and this is what I hope to have, but I need info so that I can go to my GP fully armed. I have still been having periods although they are greatly altered, and it has been 13 weeks since my last period: I haven't had a gap like this before. I cannot seem to do anything and just feel dreadful all the time, I cannot go on like this. My GP tries to get me on anti-depressants whenever I see her but I don't feel that they are the answer. I am wondering if she will say that body-identical hormones are too expensive, as she refused to send me to the Menopause Clinic at the John Radcliffe on those grounds - do they cost more than the regular stuff? Also, my hair is thinning at an alarming rate (already have bald spots) - could this be an imbalance of testosterone and would HRT stop it? I would so welcome any advice you have to give, everything just seems utterly bleak at the moment.