Right so this is a bit of a milestone for me and I'm writing it here because I need to mark it somewhere. I have an appointment with my GP next Thursday. And for the first time in about three years of quietly suffering through what I can only describe as my body becoming a completely alien thing, I have actually written down the symptoms I'm too embarrassed to say out loud in a six-minute appointment. Dryness. Real, uncomfortable, sometimes honestly painful dryness. The fact that intimacy has changed in a way I haven't known how to explain to my husband, let alone a doctor. The UTI-like feelings that come and go. The way I've sort of just... quietly stopped wanting things I used to want, and told myself that was fine, that was just getting older. I wrote it all down on a notes app last night. Took me about twenty minutes because I kept deleting sentences and rewriting them in slightly less mortifying language. But it's there now. I've even got a question about local oestrogen because I read something in a thread here a few weeks ago and it stuck with me. I don't know if anything will come of Thursday. I've been fobbed off before with 'that's just how it is' and I've smiled and nodded and gone home and cried a bit. But having it written down feels like I'm taking myself seriously, even if nobody else does yet. Small step. Enormous for me personally. Just wanted to say it somewhere. x