Hi Pholmes33
I'm exactly the same age as you, and can say that after a forensic examination of my ills over recent years (with hindsght and thanks to all the info in here & on the web), they pretty much all add up to symptoms of perimenopause - a wildly dramatic yet totally invisible phase of women's life, bringing almost-daily changes! I think I first noticed memory difficulties and finger joint arthritis about 4 years ago, so that's retrospectively where I think mine started. Public information telling us most women 'hit menopause in their 50s' is, to me, like describing a massive multi-vehicle pile-up that was a wave of destruction, with cars & trucks hitting each other in a domino effect over half a mile of motorway by only mentioning when the final vehicle was hit, with no mention of the hits, twists & devastation that took place all along the chain of accidents that led to that final smash!
Perimenopause is all those incidents and crashes that happen to get you to the final crash, and our journey is likely to be bumpy - luckily there's loads of info hiding on brilliant websites and in this forum, to help us navigate and smooth out those bumps. We just have to do the searching ... and tryst that we're not going crazy / our body isn't disintegrating or riddled with ailments 😊
My symptoms - if this helps - over the last 4 or so years have been:
- sudden lack of energy / enthusiam
- loss of concentration, no longer able to hyperfocus for work
- very poor short term memory
- trigger thumb & aches in my knuckles
- pins & needles in my hands during the night
- itchy skin, esp. my breasts and back
- lower back pain (MRIs, cortisone injection)
- hip ache on rhs
- fluctuating eyesight, nightmare trying to fix on a prescription
- itchy scalp
- very light periods & missing one here & there
- zero interest in romance, male company or sex
- severe depression despite loving my life & loving my choices
- anxiety, increasing over time, not helped with counselling
- extreme / irrational fear of death, yet wanting not to live
- extreme worries about my parents' ageing, housing choices & dying
- facial shape changes (due to sometimes bloating, & collagen loss?)
- apathy, loss of my trademark lusty enthusiasm for life & adventure in everything
In short - I have felt like an alien personality has moved in, and I'm trapped away in a tiny part of my memory, trying to get out & inhabit my body again. I'm being helped now by hrt, but I'm really hoping that when this peri-mare is over that I'll get to be a Crone with my own personality & love of life back!
Hopefully (in a weird way) this sounds familiar and thus slightly reassuring???
My gp is very pro-hrt rght rrom the start of peri, and I found this backed up Professor John Studd's work (a consultant gynae specialisng in specialising in endocrinology - hormones), so I'm giving it a go.
I started with patches but they didn't stick so then went for tablets. Had a blip with the first they trued - Elleste Duet - because the synthetic progesterone didn't agree with me at all - bad facial scabs (raw acne, which I'd not had in puberty but did as an adult in my 20s, dealt with by roaccutane) and the blackest, suicidal depression. Hung on for 3 months but by then felt I'd struggle to keep living if we didn't change it, and am now on Femoston 1/10 which is sequential and continuous - meaning it's 14 days oestrogen, then 14 days oestrogen & progesteron, and you get a bleed at the end of the progesteron phase but you don't take a break in pills, you start the next month straight away. Phew! This is probably too much information in one go, but just wanted you to know you are not crackers, and if *you* feel this is peri then it probably is - trust your interoception, that it is picking up internal signals correctly & letting you know.
Best of luck with absorbing the fact you are in this phase of your life, and then all the info out there. I have found this forum to be the best resource, having dipped in & out for a long time, but now I've joined I'm finding lots more gems and a very supportive group of fellow jouneyers x
