Hi there,
My symptoms started about 8 months ago (I'm 46 years old) and I'm having really hard time. It took a while to figure out that this was perimenopause. I went through a period of about 4 months where I was sure something was terribly wrong with me-- cardiac, pulmonary, cancer, something. I even went to urgent care to get an ECG at one point, because I was sure something bad was happening. I went to a couple of doctors and was diagnosed with costochondritis (at that point my chief complaint was weird chest pain that moved around and just a general feeling of not being well), as well as anxiety and advised to see a therapist. One of the docs did a complete medical history and never mentioned peri. I started to suspect on my own and it sort of hit me over the course of a week when I was starting to have many "episodes" a day-- at that point I was keeping a diary of my symptoms, to look for patterns. I was at the grocery store with one of my young sons and one of these "episodes" came over me (a tension in my chest, followed by a weird feeling in my head and a feeling like I need to sit down-- not out of dizziness but just from not feeling myself). I realized that the feeling I was having was almost "pharmaceutical"-- like I was being flooded with some kind of drug or a reaction to a drug. Around this time I was also beginning to get horrible night sweats. That's when I had the epiphany that maybe this was hormonal and maybe these episodes were "hot flashes" or at least MY experience of a hot flash. It all started to fall into place and when I looked at my symptom diary it seemed so obvious in retrospect. I didn't suspect it before because I was basing my expectations of "hot flashes" and perimenopause in general on what I'd seen depicted in media, which always just shows a woman sweating. That didn't fit with the scary chest feelings and anxiety I was having, and my "hot flashes" weren't about pouring buckets of sweat. I've always been a person who is freezing even in the summer, so I realized that maybe what most people experience as overheating, I was actually experiencing as being warm for the first time in my life -- for the first time ever I wasn't feeling like I had to bundle up or turn up the heat in my house when everyone else is fine. I *was* having buckets of sweat at night though-- I started to wake up like clockwork at 3 or 4 am every morning with soaked sheets and pajamas.
I made an appointment with my OB/GYN and she said it sure sounded like peri and that she could prescribe me a low-dose BCP just to see if that alleviated any of my symptoms and if it did, that would basically confirm it and I could then decide to continue with them or tough it out without (I'm a bit leery of hormone replacement as my mother was one of those very unfortunate women to develop terminal breast cancer that may have been linked to her HRT back in the early days of its widespread usage. I may need to reevaluate my feelings on this.)
The BCP seem to help a little bit, but lately my symptoms have been getting stronger again, and the week of the "sugar pill" is usually hell with full-blown symptoms-- especially night sweats, weird chest feelings, HORRIBLE anxiety that keeps me up at night. I've given up all but one cup of coffee per day (I used to be a coffee fiend-- I rely on it to make it through my day with a good attitude, but lately the chest pain is not worth it and I think the caffeine really makes that worse) and I've recently given up all alcohol as well. When these symptoms first started, a glass of wine at night was one of the only things that would help ease my frantic anxious racing thoughts, but lately it seems like any alcohol at all just makes the anxiety worse (which has never happened to me before). I don't enjoy any of the comfort foods I used to and lots of things seem to give me headaches now. I feel deflated and worried all the time. I am seeing a therapist, and that helps, and she's working with me to develop skills for coping with my anxiety, but there are days when it's overwhelming and I feel so much fear that I can barely stand it. The health anxiety is terrible!
I have 3 young boys-- ages 6, 9, and 11, and one of them has special needs and I have to teach him myself at home, which is a full-time job. My husband is not much help and I've always been the "manager" for the house and family. Now I just feel like I want to crawl into bed and hide, but that just brings on the anxiety. As horrible as it feels to slog through my work day and try to put on a capable face for my kids' sake, at least while I'm engaged with them I'm more distracted from my anxiety. The anxiety is at its very worst at night when nothing can distract me. I've had awful nights where it was so bad, I had to get out of bed at 1am and get on the stationary exercise bike and ride vigorously for 20 min just to prove to myself that I'm not having a heart attack, and to "reboot" by brain.
The intensity of this experience has taken me completely by surprise. My mother is dead, so it's too late to ask her about her experience, but she never once even mentioned perimenopause symptoms to me, so I have no idea how bad it was for her-- but as I know she was on the HRT until her her cancer diagnosis, I'm guessing it must have been bad enough. It bothers me that this can come as such a shock to so many of us-- that it's not generally known how debilitating it can be, both physically and mentally. I feel very little support from the medical community, because this is a "normal" process. I'm grateful that communities like this one exist, because reading other people's experiences that are so similar to mine do give me comfort that it's not just ME and that as bad as this is, it is indeed just part of the process and I'm not dying (yet).
Hugs to you all.
(I am in the United States, BTW. I gather that most here are in the U.K.?)