HRT to take or not to take?

Its a horrible conundrum! Once I had been deemed to be in a full blown menopausal state my GP very quickly suggested that I take HRT, because she said I looked so exhausted! She put her hand on my arm and affirmed to me just how awful I looked (haggared like an old crone! my words not hers! ), and with a sympathetic but pained expression on her face wrote me out a prescription there and then. She said due to my age (47) that I would need some protective oestrogen for a few years to help with my bones and heart and to "give me a much needed boost". I dutifully slumped over to the pharmacy and waited in line with the other miserable folk, too beffudled to think, to tired to care. I put off taking it for a few days, I just didn't want to put the pills in my mouth, but eventually I succumbed and away I went for 9 months. Gradually over the first 6 weeks I began to feel quite a lot better and I forgot myself for a while until I stared noticing that I had double chins on my ankles every night and a built in life saver around my middle where my waist used to be! I had read that actually HRT doesn't make you put on weight unless you eat more, its as simple as that, just have some self control! In reality the words 'voracious' and 'ravenous' and totally out of this world 'hippo hunger' come to mind and there is no self control when you become a hungry hippo! I am very vain and so the decision to stop the pills was easy for me. I would rather be in the full blown state than put on any more weight than is absolutely neccessary at this point in the proceedings, however I know that the decision to take or not to take is not so easy for some. At the moment I am trying homeopathy which I am not wholeheartedly convinced by, however, at least it gives me a little feeling of being in control and a bit of a crutch to lean on when I really feel 'in the mud' (why the ongoing hippo analogies!). I think we have to go with our gut feelings on HRT and see what works for us. Whatever we choose, the challenge remains the same, to get through it without to much damage to ourselves and those we love.

Follicle Stimulating Hormone!

This is the one to watch ladies if you think you too could be slipping ino the pit! the FSH. Apparently, as its blood levels creep up to 50 you become peri menopausal, sounds sweet and inoffensive! The peri menopause is essential to ease you in gently. You are therefore in that phase where some things still actually make sense and some people are still just about tolerable but at least you can brace yourself for the onslaught! As the FSH climbs above the 50 mark, so your ability to tolerate just about anyone diminishes and you officially become 'a mad old bat!'. You also suddenly realise what your poor mother went through and can be found weeping uncontrollably down the phone to your mother who is doubless on the other end silently laughing uncontrollably to herself!

This FSH is released as a direct response to our sadly diminishing oestrogen supplies and our GP's are able to test the levels quite easily, that is of course, if they can be bothered!

Follicle is a nasty word! Follicles are sweaty and have hairs sticking out of them, most unpleasant! I'm sure they have been a survival essential for human beings since we crawled naked out of the undergrowth, but they can go into room 101 for my money. We are unfortunately at the mercy of our stimulated follicles in fact I feel as if I am a follicle on overdrive, weeping and sprouting! As I see it, FSH stands for Fat, Smelly and Hairy (or Forever Sodding Hungry!)

Ps thanks to those of you who have sent me comments so far, we are one!

The dawning of the new era

I can remember the day that was the start of it! I'd been to my GP feeling "horrible" and because, I'd had one or two run-ins with people which were, now I look back on it, very embarrassing! Random verbal attacks on unsuspecting shop workers because you think your being followed by the store detective are nearly always a bad idea and I cringe when I think how I shouted at the poor woman on the till! She however stayed very calm (makes it worse I feel!), I think she thought I was a secret shopper, I most definately wasn't a happy shopper! I have seen her since and I always want to stop and say I'm sorry, I always try to catch her eye but she looks through me, oblivious, probably sorting her own demons out! The day I gave her a verbal seeing too, I also sorted a few issues out with one of the doctors at work, misreading his attempts to help me out with something I 'let him have it' and 47 years of pent up aggression was fired at him including some serious standing up for the rights of all nurses and women all over the world and throughout history.............I can still see his face now! So as you can imagin when I sat in front of my GP and said that "I just feel horrrible!!", it didn't really cover it! She said "Oh dear, perhaps we'll check your FSH" and with that I was ushered in to see the nurse who not being very skilled at the old blood letting, came seriously close to getting the third verbal lashing of the day!

Menopause

Calling all menopausal women out there, especially the one's that really feel as if they are drowning, do you feel like talking about it, shouting about it, lying down on the floor and having a bloody good tantrum about it!?

I'm 47 years old and menopausal and I'm really fed up with there being nothing sensible out there for me to draw on and to help me make sense of this very significant time of my life.

I feel physically bloody awful most days and mentally swing from being at times, extremely out going and opinionated, verging on the hysterical, where I could take on the world and it's husband and heaven help anyone who gets in my way in the M & S aisle, to introverted and sullen and pointless my brain completely void of thought with bouts of sobbing in between.

Everyone is wrong, I am right, then somehow eveyone is right and I most certainly am wrong!

I don't want to embrace it and I don't want my boobs to get any more matronly than they already are!

What I object to more than anything is the lack of any kind of respect from the medical profession about the menopause and I think it's about time there was a massive world wide uprising of menopausal women! ........................well at least a local support group!