51 and I want to write this down before I convince myself it was always fine. Eight weeks ago I was genuinely frightened. Not dramatically frightened, just that quiet dread where you lie there at 2am thinking is this just... life now? The flushes were relentless, I was crying at things I can't even remember, and I was so tired I was making mistakes at work that I kept having to quietly fix. This week I slept four nights in a row without waking drenched. Four. I keep checking my notes because I don't quite trust my memory of how bad it was anymore, which is funny in a slightly grim way. I've been keeping rough sleep and mood notes since I started HRT and I'm genuinely glad I did because looking back I can see there was about a five week point where things started to quietly shift. Not a moment. Just a gradual settling. The other thing, and I say this only as my own experience, is that I've been making sure I eat something with proper protein after my walks and the one strength session I do a week. Whether that's connected to anything I honestly don't know. Might be coincidence. But I've kept doing it because it's easy and it doesn't hurt. I have a follow-up appointment coming and I want to be honest that sleep still isn't perfect, the flushes haven't gone completely, and my mood can still drop quite suddenly on certain days. So it's not a neat ending. But it's not where I was. And I really needed someone to tell me at the start that it might not be where I was forever. So. Here I am saying it. x