Hello! Just joined, first post. I’ve been browsing the group and am finding the hive-mind of information here so useful and also reassuring.
I’m 55 and started HRT three months ago. It's been a long time coming.
I largely sailed through peri (apart from a fibroid in 2014 that caused a lot of bleeding but that was removed and I went back to normal - no Mirena). I had no other symptoms, which surprised my GP because she said my hormonal profile was one of deepest perimenopause.
In 2018 I had a classic trio of mid-life events - I turned 50, my mother died and I started getting hot flushes, all in the space of six months. Over the next year my periods wound down. I had my last one in October 2019. The only other symptom was dryness - eyes, skin, vulva and vagina - and loss of libido and lowish mood. It felt like I’d lost something really important. I put that down to my mother’s death (though she lived a very long life - she would have turned 100 today), then the pandemic came along.
Technically I was one of those lucky ones. With a weird sense of pride and denial I described myself as having ‘sailed through’ the menopause (this I realise has not helped). The hot flushes stopped, my sleep pattern was fine, I functioned well at work, vaginal oestrogen meant I could sit down comfortably. I thought once the transition was over I would go back to normal. But I was still feeling like I’d lost my zest for life, and lost the person I used to be. Loss of libido is weird - it was like something just slowly faded away in my brain, but I didn’t really care (I think my partner, who is older than me, has a touch of the equivalent ‘andropause’, but that’s another story).
The last year or so I was getting a lot of headaches, some joint pain (which I put down to training for a half marathon) and a weird ticking tinnitus in one ear, then I had mild Covid in September but it left me feeling really knackered, plus I started getting a disconcerting fluttering sensation at the top of my chest (my blood pressure is normal).
I started on Everol Conti 50 patches in October and within a week I stopped having headaches, I no was no longer hobbling when I got out of bed in the morning, and the tinnitus and palpitations were gone. It has been a bit of a revelation to be honest. I feel so much less sad.
However, the big caveat has been the bleeding, which started as spotting after two weeks on the patches but has got heavier and heavier. I had my three-month review a couple of days ago and am now on a two-week referral for an ultrasound (I am not concerned). I’ve moved to Everol 50 and utrogestan in the meantime to see if that curbs the bleeding. I still have no libido to speak of but I can live with that, and my GP, who is really good, has said once the investigations are done and I have my oestrogen-progestogen balance optimised, thinking about testosterone will be the next step.
So that is my story so far! I’d love to hear if anyone else has had a similar experience.
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Topic: What no-one told me: being post-menopausal is like having a slow puncture (Read 1682 times)