3d ago
Right, I need to talk about the itching. Because I was prepared for the hot flushes. I was prepared, sort of, for the mood stuff. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, mentioned that my skin would turn into this dry, angry, crawling thing that wakes me up at 2am because my shins are on fire for no reason. I'm 45. I thought dry skin was a winter thing. A getting-older thing I'd deal with with a slightly nicer moisturiser. Not a full-on scratching-through-my-tights situation in a meeting. I've got a GP appointment in three weeks and I'm trying to actually document what's changed so I don't just sit there and go blank like I always do. So I've started noting things down, where it's worst (arms, shins, weirdly my ears), when it flares, whether I've eaten well that day or not. I've been making more of an effort with oily fish, avocado, eggs, partly because someone in another thread mentioned healthy fats and it stuck in my brain, and I genuinely think my skin looks marginally less papery when I do? Could be nothing. Could be placebo. I don't know. I want to ask the GP whether this warrants a dermatology referral or whether it's squarely a hormonal thing, and I don't want to be fobbed off with "try E45" again. Has anyone gone down the dermatology route and actually found it useful? Or do they just send you back to the GP anyway x