Hello everyone! I’m new here, although I have been reading about women’s experiences on this forum for a long time to help me navigate my own symptoms due to Premature Ovarian Insufficiency. I’ve been extensively researching the subject of menopause for the last year and a half and reading this forum has been a valuable source of information about real life experiences of menopause. One thing that stands out is: all women are so different!!!
Hi Anglichanka, I am on 200mcg estrogen patches too and I also have been getting help from a specialist at Newson Health before I had to go back to NHS for financial reasons. And I have endometriosis too. And I am on 100mg Utrogestan, although I take it continuously, every day, and orally. I am still having my own cycles, but the Newson Health specialist said it was ok for me to go on continuous Utrogestan due to my endometriosis, so I also have a less usual regime of the Utrogestan, as normally women in perimenopause are on cyclical. But I’m happy with it. We seem to have a lot in common so maybe we could exchange private contacts, if you want?? It can be quite disheartening sometimes that we have to fight the NHS on our treatment even more that other women who are on standard doses.
When I left the Newson clinic and went back to the NHS, I was on 150mgc and they had to give it to me to continue the treatment that was working well for me at that time. A couple of months later my symptoms started coming back and having had a lot of knowledge on the subject by then and knowing my own body well and also taking my young age into consideration (young women need higher doses) I asked for an increase of the dose. My GP didn’t want to increase the dose as it was already above the licenced dose, but she was kind enough to email my specialist from the Newson clinic about it. My specialist said that she fully supports increasing the dose to 200mcg and even further if I feel that I would benefit from more and that it is necessary for good symptom control. My dose was then increased, and I felt better instantly.
One issue that hasn’t been tackled in those emails was my problem with the patches ‘running out’ before the patch change day which makes my symptoms come back before the new patch is due. I have asked my GP to let me change them more often, but she didn’t agree, telling me that it isn’t safe (which I think is ridiculous, because if anything is not safe for me is having low levels of estrogen on certain days which make me feel like I’m going to die, and I feel normal again when I change the patches). I was forced to write an email to my specialist at Newson Health a few days ago to ask for a support to my claim. I called the admin team about my email and asked if this can be sorted that way and they were very helpful and told me that my specialist should get back to me in up to a week.
So right now, I am waiting for a reply, but I encourage you to do the same and just email your specialist at Newson Health to support your current regime of HRT that they have given you and tell them that you have to be on it and that it is safe for you.
Don’t change it if it is working well for you, only because some NHS nurse training for menopause was shocked at your high dose. It is hardly surprising that she was shocked as women have been denied hrt altogether for decades now, which we now know that was very unjust to women. The result of that situation is not only that women had to suffer so much even though there was available treatment but also that the GPs and nurses have very little experience treating women with HRT and don’t come across that many women on HRT, and women who need their doses to be adjusted differently than average are going to be rare for them indeed. These people know next to nothing as we women have been so neglected by medical research for decades. And it will take decades to fix it.
Unfortunately, less usual cases like you and me don’t have decades to wait until the whole medical world starts appreciating our unique needs. We need to feel normal now and protect our future health now. And we need to prepare ourselves that we will have to fight for our treatment more than other women. At least you are lucky that your GP is OK with your treatment. And luckily for the rest of us there are specialists like Dr Newson who are already working on changing the situation and they know from most recent research and their own broad clinical experience that some women need higher than licenced doses because women have different absorption rates, different metabolisms, different age and different levels of estrogen that they feel good on. And some, like me for example, have a combination of all those factors that qualify for a higher dose. Therefore, I expect that I will have to increase even further than 200mcg in the future.
So, take care and don’t let them break what your specialist has fixed. It’s not them that will end up in a new hormonal mess but you.
You can contact me privately, but I don’t know how to do it… Btw, are you Polish? Your username looks a bit familiar to me but with English spelling, not sure
P.S. I was shocked when I went to my pharmacy and to Boots in my town with a prescription for Estradot patches and they told me that they have never had them before and that I am the only one in town ordering them……… It made me feel like a pioneer here in town
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Topic: Puzzled by nurse's objection to HRT dose (Read 2454 times)