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[coldlittleheart]

Hey all, I'm new here. I'm 55, been menopausal for 4 years, and suddenly I am having a lot of trouble coping with anything and everything. I've always had anxiety, had bouts of depression on and off until about 15 years ago, turns out ADs don't agree with me at all so depression is a scary territory for me. what do I do if I can't take ADs?

So lately, past few months, I have been constantly anxious, mood's all over the place, hot flashes wake me up in the night, I have fibromyalgia too, so my sleep is already very bad. I have very low mood and I get upset at the smallest thing, I know logically that those things are nothing to worry about, but I can't seem to be able to help myself. I feel so miserable with the constant anxiety and worrying, it's making me feel crazy and extra tired. What makes me feel particularly crazy is the rumination, the way my anxious brain pads out slightly upsetting situations with loads of worse case scenario until I feel it's the end of the world. Can any of you relate to this?

 I've had hot flashes and night sweat for about 4 years now, at first they went in periods of a few months with, a month or 2 without. Now it's non stop, I've tried herbal things, starflower oil, nothing helps. Tried clonidine but that didn't work very well and upset my stomach.

I spoke with my GP a couple weeks ago, and reluctantly asked if I could maybe try HRT, but a low dose. So she gave me Kliovance. I still have it, I read the reams and reams of side effects and I scared myself, thanks to my crazy overreactive brain.  The cancer, stroke scare me and the hair loss bit worried me as I have lost quite a bit of hair already and it is just finally stopping shedding and growing back a little. And nausea??

What do I do. I don't know if I will get better on my own, I don't really want to live like this, I always find myself anxious, worrying, angry or weepy. But the HRT scares me a little, even though I have read that the cancer risks were very marginally more on HRT and who knows, the few more women who had cancer on HRT might have well had it anyway without HRT? Kind of impossible to tell. 

Shall I give this a try?

[Miabella]

Hi cold little heart,


Sorry to hear you are struggling. I have a similar story - history of anxiety, came back after many years of being ok, took a while for me to connect it to the night sweats that had started, and now I am convinced it must be menopause as in the past ADs have worked for me but they're not doing much this time.

My advice would be to try HRT - I am hoping to when I see my doctor next time. Anxiety and the way it controls your thoughts and feelings is truly awful and if there's a way to not feel like that then we owe it to ourselves to give it a go. I appreciate your fears - mine are that it will make me feel worse before I feel better, and that I am one of those where it takes a while to find the one that works. But if the alternative is to feel like this for possibly years then trying HRT seems like an easy choice.

X

[coldlittleheart]

Hi Miabella, that makes sense, and I might start it. Like you I also worry that it will make me worse. But as it were, at the moment I worry about everything. It is awful and I can't cope with this at all, it is stopping me from functioning almost completely. ADs are out of the question for me as they have never worked well for me, and made me into a different person if that makes sense? And they make me binge drink (yes, alcohol  ), go figure!

I am going out of town for the day tomorrow and I am wondering if starting the day before I go away from home is a wise idea, what if I get bad side effects? Time to read about Kliovance on here again. Could be that I never get any side effects, but what if I do. Would they appear this soon?

[CLKD]

R U able to explain why anti-depressant medication don't 'agree' with you?  In the late 1980s I had to take something, each medication made me feel so sick  or weird but eventually the GP round a drug which worked well for me till the early 2002s. Then my brain got used to it 

What types of AD have U been prescribed?  Also so you take an anti-anxiety medication?  I have found that Rescue Remedy mouth spray helps me.  I don't think whether it works, I simply use it.

Anxiety can be caused by the body being hungry.  As I have found over the years  .

If you are going on holiday and if you are able to cope with the present symptoms, Leave Well Alone until your return?

[coldlittleheart]

R U able to explain why anti-depressant medication don't 'agree' with you?  In the late 1980s I had to take something, each medication made me feel so sick  or weird but eventually the GP round a drug which worked well for me till the early 2002s. Then my brain got used to it 

Hello, it wasn't just a matter of making me feel sick, that was one of the things, but they gave me side effects and no real benefits to speak of. They make me into someone I don't know, if that makes sense, like a different person transplant. They also cause me to binge drink as I said in an earlier reply. I thought that was weird but then I found an article, and apparently there is a gene that reacts that way with antidepressants and cause people to binge drink, particularly SSRIs. They also made me gain loads of weight, withdrawals were terrible, last time I was on ADs (seroxat) I told my GP, I wanted to get off them, he laughed and said I'd be back within a month wanting to be back on them, guess what, once the awful withdrawal period was over, I'd never felt better. No more depression. And I felt like myself again. I was given ADs initially for anxiety and panic disorder, they never worked for that at all. And then when I got depression, they didn't help and some made things worse.

What types of AD have U been prescribed?  Also so you take an anti-anxiety medication?  I have found that Rescue Remedy mouth spray helps me.  I don't think whether it works, I simply use it.

I was started on ADs in the early 80s and I have been on several. Amitriptyline, seroxat, prozac (made me violent, I am not a violent person, but when I was on Prozac I got so angry once I punched a wall and broke my hand - not like me at all! When I mentioned this to my next GP he said that this is a drug that should not be given to people with extrovert personalities, that it can cause aggression. Good to know eh? to continue my list: Zoloft, Citalopram, effexor, trazodone, doxepin, clomipramine, imipramine, doxepin, and probably a few more that I don't remember. See why I am not keen on going down that route again?

Rescue remedy does nothing at all for me, I have diazepam for when I feel really bad but I don't want to take it several times a day. At the moment, my anxiety levels are constant, a little event makes everything flare up into a near panic. I have also tried more herbals than you shake a stick at, nothing really helped. And then this now. Ugh, unbearable when it gets bad. This week has been awful.

Anxiety can be caused by the body being hungry.  As I have found over the years  .

Yes, I find that when my blood sugar levels are low I get weird, light headed and spaced out. I always make sure I snack in between meals, like fruit and nuts, that sort of thing. But this is different.

If you are going on holiday and if you are able to cope with the present symptoms, Leave Well Alone until your return?

I am just going away for the day tomorrow, but see this is an example of my over worrying mind.

I just spoke to my lovely pharmacist and she reassured me, saying that unless I get a bad reaction, that would happen pretty much straight away but as it's a hormone medication, it will take some time to build up and if I am scared of it and it doesn't help, I don't have to stay on it, I can just stop taking it. Or discuss with my GP for another type of HRT.

I am pretty sure this is not clinical depression as I've had it before and it didn't go away for about a week only to come back. It was constant.