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[Sue123]

I started on HRT about 8 months ago and have been told by the GP that am pretty late to the party at 58.
I was put on Femostone 1/10 to begin with but this didn't help with any of my symptoms - hot sweats, tear-fullness, insomnia, mood swings, hot and cold flashes etc so the GP upped it to femostone 2/10. I was a lot better on that dosage but started to get so very cross and had this raging temper when i started the progesterone part of the pack!!! not like me at all.
I would just let rip at anyone.... for any reason... so out of character for me.

back to the GP who suggested I try the mirena coil and use estrogel along side.

Great. i had the coil fitted 4 week ago and its been amazing. the temper has calmed down and the coil has settled very quickly - but now i have all the hot sweats, tear-fullness and insomnia back again! I upped the dosage to max with the estrogel (4 pumps a day) but no change.

has anyone else had anything similar and what did you try or find that works?

I'm back to see the GP today to inquire if there is a different type of estrogen I can take as i wonder if my body isnt absorbing enough of the gel!
also to find something thats suitable and available to get on prescription in the area.

i feel like im pulling my hair out and going round in circles. Id really appreciate any ideas you may have and want to share.
thank you

[Hurdity]

Hi Sue123

 

Sorry to hear you have a return of symptoms despite using a high dose of estrogel. Not sure what dose you started on and for how long but sounds like your body is needing to get used to having oestrogen through a different delivery method ie adjusting from tablet to transdermal? You need to give this a while  although I would have thought it should have settled within 4 weeks as transdermal is a better and more direct way of getting oestrogen into your system. Depending on how long you've been using the 4 pumps - give it a while and then maybe consider a patch perhaps, if no change? When I changed from a patch to gel (Sandrena) my flushes came back within a month - so the dose obviously wasn't high enough, but I didn't stay on it long enough to tweak since the patches had always worked well for me but thought i would try a change as many members seemed to do so well on it.

Ideally at your age a medium dose oestrogen should deal with flushes and sweats so maybe you're just not absorbing - there is a wide variation amongst women in this.

The good thing is that the coil is working for you and getting the progestogoen part sorted can be the most challenging for some women.

Another thought - some women find that when progesterone is high (eg during the cyclical part of HRT) flushes and sweats temporarily return and then abate once the prog part is over. Some women (on here!) have increased temporarily to counter this. Could it be that because the coil is new and giving out a relatively higher amount of prog, that this is interfering in some way with the action of oestrogen, hence the flushes, so you need a correspondingly higher dose of oestrogen if you are sensitive to this maybe? Just wondering aloud really....!

Hope you manage to get some relief soon

Hurdity x