white_hart

People who take/have taken HRT for menopause symptoms, can I ask how you've found it? My GP suggested that menopause might be exacerbating my existing mental health problems and contributing to the current kablooeyness, and asked me to think about whether I'd like to try HRT. My first reaction was no, because I've never wanted to go on HRT - I had a horrible time on hormonal contraception and worry it would actually just make my mental health worse, and also I was so delighted to be over the whole thing that I hate the idea of having to take medication for something I welcomed so much. (Plus some complicated gender feels about HRT making me more woman and less genderless goblin, which I should probably just try to get over because I can't change my endocrine system by willpower alone.)

But...what if the tiredness and brain fog aren't just because I've been under continual extreme stress at work for three years, and have had various non-work stresses as well? What if it is to do with menopause and HRT would help? (I was ranting the other week about medicalisation of normal life stages and capitalism not letting people just have less energy at some life stages than others, but however true that is it doesn't change the fact that capitalism is the ocean I'm swimming in.)

Anyway. What is your experience of HRT? In particular, has anyone had good experiences with HRT after bad experiences with hormonal contraception?

For some reason my hayfever appears to have gone into overdrive the last couple of days. (That or I just forgot to take an antihistamine yesterday morning, I suppose). It has been a really bad year for it; I'm sure that normally I'm pretty much over it by this time of year.

I'm also at the "feeling even tireder" stage of attempting to rest and catch up on sleep now I'm on holiday.

It's also struck me that when I'm back to working five days a week my Friday swims will be out, and fitting the things I want to do (swimming and sewing, and I'd really like to get back into walking more with T as well) into my weekends as well as just taking the time to recover from the weeks is going to be really difficult. (Last winter, I managed swimming and slow sewing, but no walking. Pre-pandemic, I walked, but didn't swim or sew.)

After my post about the menopause last week, I bought and started reading Dr Jen Gunter's The Menopause Manifesto. I'm slightly wishing I hadn't because I'm not sure knowing about all the possible health problems that occur after menopause is doing me any good at all, and I'm now worrying about whether I should be doing more exercise, and how on earth I could fit it in if I should.

Over on Facebook, I have been asking people about their experiences of menopause, after reading this Guardian article about menopausal women being forced out of work, and also seeing something about a campaign to make menopause a protected characteristic under the Equality Act.

I have had a very easy menopause. My cycles became less and less predictable over a few years; some were very short, which was annoying, and while my periods were generally shorter than they used to be the first day or so was often heavy, but there were only a few occasions when I had real flooding. Hot flushes have been rather annoying (and I'm not sure how the constant cardigan-off-cardigan-on comes across to other people) but no more than that; the nighttime ones took more getting used to, but eventually I got to a stage where I'm only half waking up most of the time, and am able to manage OK with the interrupted sleep. I certainly don't have any more depression, anxiety or brain fog than I always did (and much less depression than when I was on Cerazette).

From the comments on my Facebook post, it's clear that I've been lucky in this, and friends have had a much worse time of it. I'm glad that there is more conversation, and more awareness; I hope that this will lead to GPs taking menopause symptoms more seriously, and employers offering more support. I also wonder, though, how I'd have felt if I'd read all of these things ten years ago. What if I'd gone into my forties expecting menopause to be horrendous, instead of just thinking that I'd be glad to be done with periods?

I am 47 years and 3 days old, and as of today I am officially a crone*. I went swimming this morning to celebrate.

A selfie of a white person with short grey-brown hair and glasses, wearing a black top with a hood lined in red fleece, with a river and trees behind her.

It's strange, not knowing that your last period is the last. I knew I'd been perimenopausal for years; when I came off the Pill in 2014, my cycles were significantly shorter than they had been in the past (around 21 days); then they got more erratic and there were a couple of 2-3 month gaps interspersed with stretches when they were more regular. A couple of years ago I started getting hot flushes, and then I had a period in January 2020, a gap long enough that I had started to wonder if that had been the last one, and one more in May. When it got to six months, I started counting seriously, and for the last couple of months I've been keeping my fingers firmly crossed that my body wouldn't chuck one last surprise my way. (To be honest, if I had started bleeding after 11 months, I'd have been getting it checked out medically anyway.)

I've always loathed being lumbered with a female reproductive system. I started my periods when I was 10 years and 11 months old, which is far too young, and spent my teens struggling with horrendous PMS. (The first time I went on the Pill was to try to regulate my hormones so that PMS wouldn't affect my A-level performance.) I spent years running packs of pills back-to-back so I didn't have periods, and worrying about accidental pregnancy despite being an almost perfect Pill user. And now I am utterly delighted to be done with the whole thing. No more cramps, no more PMS, no more dripping gore all over the bathroom, no more even theoretical possibility of pregnancy. Menstruation was a burden I never wanted, and I'm glad to have lost it so soon.

*post-menopausal

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4	5	6	7	8	9	10
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18	19	20	21	22	23	24
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