12 Jun
58 and honestly? the joint stuff is the thing I never bring up. My husband asks how I'm doing and I say fine. My daughter asks and I say tired. Nobody gets told about the way my hands feel in the morning or how my hips have started making... opinions known every time I get off the couch. I don't know why I keep it to myself. Maybe because it sounds so old. Maybe because I already used up everyone's patience during the hot flash years and the mood years and the sleep years and I just can't be ANOTHER thing right now. What I have been doing is walking. Nothing dramatic, 25-30 minutes most mornings before the day gets loud. And weirdly the days I walk, the hip thing is less bad in the afternoons. Could be coincidence. I'm not drawing conclusions. But I keep going anyway. I've also been quietly reading about calcium and vitamin D because I have a feeling my next appointment is going to involve a bone density conversation and I want to show up knowing something. Started paying more attention to what I'm actually eating, sardines on crackers which I genuinely like, fortified oat milk, the odd handful of almonds. Not a diet. Just noticing. The thing I actually want to ask my doctor is about long-term HRT. I've been on it for six years and every single appointment feels like she's waiting for me to want to stop. I don't want to stop. I want to have a real conversation about what staying on it means for me specifically, at 58, with the joint stuff, with my history. Does anyone else feel like you have to argue for your own continuity? Like you did the hard work getting on it and now there's this slow drip of are you sure, still? Yeah. Still.