Is it just me or did nobody warn you that at 50 your periods would basically become feral?? I've gone from clockwork every 28 days to absolutely no idea, and when they do arrive they're just... a lot. Like embarrassingly a lot. I flooded through onto a chair at work last month and I wanted to disappear into the floor. I've started keeping a rough calendar on my phone because I genuinely cannot predict anything anymore and I need to at least be able to show the GP something concrete. So now I'm writing down when it starts, how heavy (I've resorted to actual numbers, pads per day, glamorous stuff), and how wiped out I feel afterwards because the exhaustion is something else entirely. Which brings me to something I want to ask before my next appointment. Has anyone pushed specifically for iron bloodwork? I keep reading that heavy periods can tank your ferritin and I wonder if that's part of why I feel like I've been run over every few weeks. I don't want to go in and just say "I'm tired" because I know how that sounds. I want to be able to ask for something specific. Also I've been trying to eat more iron-rich stuff on the worst days, lentil soup, that kind of thing, nothing fancy, just something warm that doesn't take much effort when I can barely stand up. Honestly even that feels like progress right now. x