Hi Sed
from me too.
Sorry to hear about your symptoms.
Just to add my thoughts too. As already said blood tests cannot determine your exact menopausal status - just a rasied FSH level tells you that you are peri-menopausal. Your age, cycle and symptoms are the guide, according to NICE , and blood tests are not needed - apart from to determine other cause of other symptoms like thyroid etc as you have had.
Please do not suffer - HRT will make a huge difference to your life once you are settled on it. As the others have said you should be taing a sequential HRT not a continuous one because your last period was recent and the one before also. You are likely in late peri-menopause judging by the frequency of periods. Do read the information on this site about HRT which goes into it all. (Top tabs - menopause, treatments etc).
Now a thing about continuois combined HRT. It won't do you any harm to take this but two reasons why not advisable at this stage. First if your cycle is sporadic then you will get unpredictable bleeding after you've ovulated because HRT does not suppress the cycle. This can be annoying. If you take cyclical/sequential HRT then the withdrawal bleed will usually be predictable (not a proper period) although sometimes when your cycle kicks in you may get a bit of bleeding at the "wrong" time.
Secondly starting off with cyclical HRT helps you work out if the preparation is right for you. This is because you take two weeks of oestrogen only - the hormone that women want and need at this time and which best controls the menopausal symptoms, and then you can tell how you feel once you add the combi part of the pill with the progestogen in it. In your case this would be Femoston 1/10 or 2/10. Best to start with a lower dose and increase if you feel your symptoms are not well controlled. This has a well-tolerated progestogen in it.
Ant-anxiety medication is absolutely not indicated in your position. The NICE Guidelines are quite clear that HRT is the first line of treatment for menopausal symptoms including anxiety if this is caused by menopause and you are better off getting the hormone levels sorted first. If you have depression (not anxiety) after all of this or which occurred at other poibnts in your life then ADs might be considered. Menopausal anxiety is best dealt with through the means you are already trying and others like hRT which hopefully will work for you! Eating a good diet, excercising, losing weight if needed, reducing alcohol etc are all ways to improve your health and well-being without the need for other medication.
If you don;t want to bleed then the Mirena coil might now be a better option. Although some bleeding is expect at first, once you are menopausal this should not happen and the progestogen will protect your womb. Then you can take oestrogen in the form of patch, pill, gel or spray at a level which sorts out your symptoms.
Unless your doc had a specific reason to prescribe Femoston conti rather than a cyclical HRT s/he was wrong so do read up about it all so you know what you;re talking about. Some docs are not especially knowledgeable about HRT and menopause....
Good luck and do get back to us if you have any more questions
Hurdity x
