The note was embarrassingly simple. Three columns: date, what happened, what I had tried. I almost did not bring it because it felt too basic.

Of 40 women in this cohort, 63% mentioned hot flashes. This figure comes from approved logs in the current Narrated corpus, including seed corpus entries during launch density.

But it changed the appointment. Instead of trying to explain a year of feeling unlike myself, I could point to the pattern. The hot flashes were not just daytime. The sleep disruption was not just stress. The mood changes were not floating off by themselves.

* * *

I left with more questions, not fewer, but they were better questions. That was the difference. I was not trying to be the doctor. I was trying to stop arriving empty-handed.