Hi,
I’m 52 and this is a brief overview of My menopause journey so far.
I was taken off the low dose combined pill at 51 and put on the Mini pill. Two months later my first symptom was Insomnia, I completely stopped sleeping then came severe vaginal dryness, too painful to sit down along with urinary frequency, hot flushes and night sweats and palpitations, Jumpy on edge, dizzy.I was desperate but not depressed or anxious. Was started on Femoston 1/10 a couple of months later after they insisted I had blood tests first to see if I was Menopausal. The 1/10 dose didn’t do anything so then swapped to Femoston 2/10, was on that for 5 weeks before seeing a Menopause specialist who put me on EstroGel and Utrogestan and Vagifem. The symptoms did not ease even with the ever increasing dose under Doctors guidance and started getting more symptoms, anxiety, short fuse, flustered, dry skin and hair, joint pain. Swapped to Evorel patches high dose to see if we could get better symptom relief. I felt off my trolley on Evorel but I don’t know if it’s because I wasn’t absorbing the gel then the patch dose was too high to start on or it just didn’t agree with me so I stuck with it for a couple of months but I was getting jolts every night when drifting off to sleep so still had to take zopiclone to sleep. Also started oral Utrogestan along with started the patches and not sure if that agreed with me because I had so many symptoms I didn’t know what was causing what. I decided to start reducing the patches over the month because I couldn’t cope with how I was feeling, about 9 days after reducing to 75mg I became very ill and ended up in A & E, shaking, couldn’t speak properly, felt like the life had been drained from me, the the next day I felt really low, depressed, I had never felt like it before. To try and cut a long story short I went back on the gel and Utrogestan vaginally Along with testosterone because my bloods show no testosterone plus my GP persuaded me to take Mirtazapine to see if it helps with sleep. I felt a bit better over the next few weeks but I started feeling fatigued generally and my muscles were so tired when I tried to exercise, my skin was getting more dry and starting to sag on my body, floaty feeling when walking, eyelashes and hair thinning and thick dark hairs growing on my face and body. The EstroGel dose was increased again (under guidance) but my symptoms were getting worse and more were showing. I weaned myself off the Mirtazapine because I couldn’t stop eating and was obsessed with food, sweets mainly which is not me. Then over the next month my sleep got worse, dry mouth, dry eyes, dry vagina, nauseous, more joint pains to add to the other symptoms mentioned before. Then I crashed completely emotionally I was low, terrified of everything and couldn’t leave the house, couldn’t talk to anyone outside of the household Then I felt physically ill, like I had flu, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
I was urgently put on the low dose pill that I was on previously to give me some respite because I was very ill. I got much worse over the next few weeks, I really thought I was dying. On day 31 of starting the pill I physically started to feel so much better, then the low mood lifted. I’m am still very anxious and have a short fuse, typical PMS symptoms, palpitations and my sleep has still not returned, skin and hair will take months to improve but I am getting better slowly and I’m sure this will continue as I just want to feel well again and have some sort of life back.
The next stage once I have had some respite from my hormones (lack of) is to find a HRT that works, which I’m not looking forward to.
I hope what I have written makes sense.
Without the ladies on this forum I would have thought I was going mad, but reading your stories have made me feel like I’m not alone and it’s not me it’s my hormones. I don’t know the me at the moment with a short fuse, angry and no patience but I’m sure over the coming weeks I will be back.
Thank you all so much.
