Hi everyone,
I've got a quite specific problem and wondered if anyone can relate/has advice.
I've been on HRT for 3 years (now 48), I had one ovary removed post giving birth aged 32 and the other one is surrounded by a dermoid cyst. Basically not sure how long my hormones have been low (noone would check!) Prior to HRT I actually had too frequent bleeding (sometimes 14 day cycle) and lots of symptoms from joint pain to itchy skin, night sweats and hot flashes at night which caused early waking and not getting back to sleep. It was a horror show.
Prescribed estrogel and utrogestan cyclically by Newsons as GP was hopeless.
I struggled with taking utrogestan orally - anxiety particularly in the morning, severe itchy boobs, feeling too hot etc etc. Did totally regulate my cycle however.
Eventually tried utrogestan as a pessary, seemed to go OK better tolerated, but I did start to feel pain discomfort and loss of bladder control. I started to struggle with the stopping and starting of progesterone, I was encouraged to increase my estrogen and tried to go continuous with P (wasn't regularly using local estrogen) - after a few months I got a horrible UTI and I don;t react well to antibiotics. Was still painful and felt like hell post antibiotics, felt like UTI didn't go away. I started using vagifem more consistantly, used ovestin a bit externally and changed to Cyclogest and tried to use it cyclically. The local area symptoms seemed to settle down but then I started getting frequent bleeding. I stopped using the vagifem etc I was worried my estrogen may be too high/P too low. In order to stop the bleeding I have taken the cyclogest continuously for 2 months, gradually become more and more fatigued and then this week hit with UTI symptoms, found leukocytes in my urine, tried one antibiotic which caused a bad reaction, tried a single sachet antibiotic. Brought back ovestin and vagifem and have stopped the cyclogest for now. Still having symptoms.
Struggling!
I have been encouraged to get a Mirena fitted at a hysteroscopy this month. There is so much for and against out there on the internet. I seem to have great difficulty with progesterone so I am scared at the idea of having this dose constantly in the area. Systemic P is too hard but I feel that using local P has contributed to the VA and urinary symptoms in a big way. Long story short, does anyone have experience regarding the use of local P either as a pessary or as a Mirena and it's impact on these kind of symptoms? Any thoughts and advice greatly appreciated. I did try using the cyclogest as a suppository but just woke up in a burning hot flash so not sure that's a good sollution. I still feel lousy and flu like since this UTI so not sure if it's still there but looking back I had been feeling very fatigued for several weeks since upping the cyclogest.
I feel like my whole life is falling apart, I'm a single mum of a teenager and I need to be relatively able bodied but I just can't seem to establish hormonal balance and it's knocking me on my arse physcially and emotionally. The Cyclogest pessaries are 200 and I'm on 125 estrdiol (patch and gel combined) and testim gel as my testosterone was found to be zero. My estrogen consistently tests low considering dose in my blood, but I got scared because NHS menopause nurse called me to say they were cutting anyones estrogen back over the RDA and basically blaming too much estrogen for bleeding issues. However i consistently get symptoms of low E (I think!) also despite gel my testosterone levels remain either very low or sometimes zero.
Sorry for my life story! Any thoughts on how to use P and if the Mirena is a good option or not would be great - indeed any thoughts at all, and I do apologise for the essay!!
Thank you