I Started HRT for Menopausal Matters, and I Have Mixed Emotions

Checking in to the tortured past-it poets department

Photo by Thomas Griesbeck on Unsplash

If there is some sort of official coronation for my middle age card, I am surely a part of it now. I may still listen to Taylor Swift, but today I feel officially old.

Thanks to perimenopause I have felt like my body and mind have deserted me recently. Over the past year I have had two (male) doctors tell me I’m too young for menopause, that I should suck it up and wait for my periods to stop, and other unhelpful stuff.

So I finally got an appointment with a grown as heck woman doctor yesterday. I had to wait a month, but it was (hopefully) worth it.

This doctor was a wonder. She listened, she immediately suggested HRT while telling me all of the possible drawbacks and side effects. I felt seen and heard by a doctor for the first time in a long time, and it made me want to cry. Or maybe that was just my whirligig hormones.

I was doing ok until a few months ago. Irregular periods I can handle.

But the symptoms started building to a bitterly unsweet symphony recently. Night sweats, the lowest mood I have had in years, feeling as energetic as a baked potato, joint pain, waking up in a panic/anxiety attack, brain fog, skin…