Diane

Been trying to work out what to actually write down before I see my GP next week and I'm drawing a blank. Not because nothing's happening, God no, more like where do I even start. The flushes are maybe six or seven times a day now, more at night, and I wake up completely drenched which is just... delightful. I've been scribbling a few things in my phone notes, how many times I wake up, whether I had wine or a coffee after lunch (I've noticed those two seem to make the next morning worse for me, though could be coincidence). But I don't know if that's the kind of thing they actually want to see. What I really want to ask about is the different HRT options because I've read bits about patches versus gel and I genuinely don't know what questions to even form. Like, is it worth asking why one over the other? Do you ask that or does the GP just decide and you accept it? I don't want to go in sounding like I've been on Google for three hours (I have been on Google for three hours). If anyone wrote something down before their first HRT conversation I'd love to know what you included. Did you track flush frequency, sleep, mood? Did you ask about forms or just take what you were offered? Bit lost here x

Been lurking here for ages and finally typing something out because my GP appointment is next week and I'm absolutely bricking it. I want to ask about HRT properly this time, not just get fobbed off with "it's probably just stress" again. Last time I left with literally nothing and cried in the car park. So I've been trying to write stuff down beforehand. Not in any organised way, just... when I wake up at 3am absolutely drenched and furious I grab my phone and type a note. I've got about two weeks of those now. Flush in the night. Flush before lunch. Heart going mental on the bus for no reason. That sort of thing. What I'm less sure about is whether to ask specifically about patches versus gel. I've read bits and pieces here and elsewhere and I genuinely don't know what questions to even ask the GP. Like do you ask them to explain the difference? Do you say you've heard gel might suit some people better? I don't want to come across as difficult but I also don't want to just accept whatever they hand me without understanding it. Also I've noticed I'm much worse after coffee and honestly devastated about that. Been cutting back this week and writing that down too, just to see. Did anyone else make a list before their first proper HRT conversation? What did you actually put on it? x

Hello wise ladies. 51 and finally booked a GP appointment for next week after months of pretending this is all fine. It is very much not fine. I want to actually ask about HRT properly this time, not just get handed a leaflet and sent away. But I'm a bit clueless about what I should even be writing down beforehand. Like, do I just say "I'm hot all the time and I haven't slept properly since 2022"? Because that's accurate but probably not very useful. I've seen people mention keeping notes. What did you actually write? Flush times? How bad they were? I've been trying to jot things down this week and it's mostly just "3am, soaking, furious" which feels more like a crime diary than a symptom log. Also I have a vague question about the different forms of HRT, patches versus gel, and I have no idea whether I'm even allowed to have a preference or whether I just get handed whatever. Did anyone go in with a specific question about that or does that come across as a bit much? I genuinely don't know the etiquette here. Cut back on coffee last week as an experiment. Not sure it's made a difference to the flushes but I'm slightly less unhinged before 9am so maybe that's something. Any thoughts gratefully received x

Right, so I've got an appointment next week and I'm sat here with a blank notepad wondering what on earth to actually write down. Like I know I want to bring up HRT but I don't even know where to start. Do I list every flush? There's been about eight or nine most days and then the night ones which are a whole separate nightmare. Do I mention I've been cutting back on coffee because I read something and I'm not sure if it's helping or if I'm just tired from not sleeping anyway. The thing I keep getting stuck on is the forms. Patches versus gel. I've seen both mentioned loads here and I genuinely don't know what questions I'm supposed to ask to figure out which one would even suit me. Like is that a conversation you can have with a GP or do they just hand you whatever and send you off? Last time I went she sort of nodded and said we could "keep an eye on things" which is not exactly what I needed to hear. Anyone who's been through an appointment and actually got somewhere, what did you write down beforehand? What made the difference? I don't want to go in and forget half of it and come out with nothing again x

Has anyone noticed a pattern between what they ate and how the night went? I have a suspicion about spicy food but I have not tracked it carefully enough to say anything useful. I am not looking for a list of things to avoid, more whether anyone found a method for figuring out their own triggers, or whether it turned out to be unrelated to food entirely.

Jun 21 · Liked post

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Right, I need to talk about the itching. Because I was prepared for the hot flushes. I was prepared, sort of, for the mood stuff. Nobody, and I mean absolutely nobody, mentioned that my skin would turn into this dry, angry, crawling thing that wakes me up at 2am because my shins are on fire for no reason. I'm 45. I thought dry skin was a winter thing. A getting-older thing I'd deal with with a slightly nicer moisturiser. Not a full-on scratching-through-my-tights situation in a meeting. I've got a GP appointment in three weeks and I'm trying to actually document what's changed so I don't just sit there and go blank like I always do. So I've started noting things down, where it's worst (arms, shins, weirdly my ears), when it flares, whether I've eaten well that day or not. I've been making more of an effort with oily fish, avocado, eggs, partly because someone in another thread mentioned healthy fats and it stuck in my brain, and I genuinely think my skin looks marginally less papery when I do? Could be nothing. Could be placebo. I don't know. I want to ask the GP whether this warrants a dermatology referral or whether it's squarely a hormonal thing, and I don't want to be fobbed off with "try E45" again. Has anyone gone down the dermatology route and actually found it useful? Or do they just send you back to the GP anyway x

Jun 20 · Liked post

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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

Jun 20 · Liked post

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Cardiology referral letter arrived today and I genuinely burst into tears. Relief I think, not dread, though honestly who can tell anymore. So I've been keeping a little notebook by my bed for the past three weeks. Every time my heart does its weird fluttery thing I write down the time, what I was doing, whether I'd had coffee that day, and roughly how I slept the night before. It started because I kept going blank at the GP and saying "oh it happens, you know, quite a lot" like an absolute idiot. Now I have actual times and dates. 2.17am on a Tuesday. 11.40pm after two cups of tea after 4pm. That kind of thing. The caffeine one is interesting. I haven't cut it out completely because I am not a saint, but I moved my last coffee to before noon and the late-night episodes do seem less frequent. Could be coincidence. I'm writing it down anyway. What I actually want to know before I see the cardiologist is what tests I should be asking about. I know there's an ECG, I've had one of those at the GP already. But I've seen people mention Holter monitors, the ones you wear for a few days? Is that something I can specifically request or does it depend on what they find? Also whether thyroid gets checked as a matter of course or whether I need to push for that. Not looking for anyone to diagnose me, I promise. Just want to walk in there having asked the right questions rather than nodding along and forgetting everything the minute I leave.

Jun 20 · Liked post

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Right. GP on Thursday and I am absolutely not going in there and going blank again. Last time I sat down and she asked how I was and I said 'fine, bit tired' and walked out having achieved nothing. I was furious with myself for about a week. So this time I've actually written things down. Like, properly. Dates, what woke me, how bad the 3am thing was, whether I managed to get back to sleep or just lay there catastrophising until 6. I've gone back through my phone notes (I send myself voice memos at stupid o'clock apparently, I found four I didn't remember recording). I've written down when the anxiety spikes with no obvious reason, because that one is hard to explain out loud without sounding like I'm just a bit stressed about work. I'm also going to mention the postmeno bit because I think she forgets I'm past periods now and I want to actually ask about HRT and sleep specifically. I've read enough on here to know that's worth raising. The evening walks have helped a tiny bit honestly. Not fixed anything. But I come home slightly less wired, which means I'm not lying there replaying emails at midnight quite as much. Wish me luck for Thursday. I am going in with my list and I am not apologising for it 🤞

Jun 20 · Liked post

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52 and I have spent the last three months absolutely drowning in supplement content. Every other reel is someone with perfect lighting telling me I NEED ashwagandha, or lion's mane, or some £45 powder that tastes like a garden centre. And I just... I don't know who any of these women are or whether any of it actually worked for them or whether they're just being paid. What I actually want is someone to tell me honestly: did you take magnesium for four weeks and sleep better, or didn't you? Not a transformation. Not a glow-up. Just a normal person's normal experience. I've started writing down how I feel each morning before I change anything. Just a few words in my notes app. Slept badly, anxious by 9am, foggy until noon, that kind of thing. Not because I have a system, just because I kept forgetting what baseline even felt like. I figured I should know where I actually am before I start adding things. I'm also trying to eat properly first, which sounds obvious but I'd sort of quietly stopped doing it. More protein, more veg, actually eating breakfast. Boring to type out but it feels more honest than buying another tub of something. The bit I'm nervous about is my GP appointment next month. I want to mention what I'm already taking (just vitamin D at the moment) and ask whether there's anything that might interact with HRT if she thinks that's the route. I don't really know how to bring it up without sounding like I've been on TikTok for three months. Which I have. But still. x

Jun 20 · Liked post

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Okay so I've been sitting with this for a while and I finally need to put it somewhere. My husband and I have been together for nineteen years. We've been through a lot. And I feel like somewhere in the last year and a half, intimacy just quietly... stopped. Not because either of us decided that. It just got painful for me, and then I started dreading it, and then I started avoiding it, and now there's this weird distance between us that neither of us is naming out loud. I didn't connect it to menopause for the longest time. I thought I was just tired, or stressed, or maybe this is just what long marriages become. It wasn't until I fell down a rabbit hole at midnight that I even found the words for what was happening. Dryness, yes, but also this kind of tissue sensitivity that makes everything feel wrong. I've been too embarrassed to say any of this to my OBGYN even though I know she would not judge me. I have an appointment next month and I'm genuinely trying to write it down beforehand so I don't just say "I'm fine" when she asks. I bought a lubricant a few months ago and hid it like it was contraband. I'm 48 years old. Why am I hiding it. I guess I just wanted to say this out loud in a place where someone might actually get it. My husband is kind and patient and I don't think he knows how lost I feel about this. That conversation feels huge and I don't know how to start it. If anyone has been here, I'd really just like to know I'm not the only one. ETA: not looking for anyone to fix it, just needed to say it.

Jun 20 · Liked post

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55 and I went on an actual date last night. First one in about three years. I want to be honest about how I felt getting ready because I think some of you might get it. I stood in front of my wardrobe for forty minutes. Not because I had nothing to wear, I have plenty of things to wear. But nothing felt like me anymore. My body has shifted in the last eighteen months and I kept putting things on and taking them off and getting quietly furious with myself. In the end I wore a green wrap dress I bought on a whim last autumn and never wore because I thought I looked too round in it. And you know what, I do look rounder than I used to. That is just true. But I also looked, I don't know. Present? Like someone who was actually there and not hiding. He was nice. It was fine. Nothing romantic is happening but that isn't the point I'm making. The point is I got dressed without pretending I looked twenty years younger and I went anyway. And I came home and ate scrambled eggs at 10pm and felt genuinely okay about the whole evening. That is the win I'm logging. Not him. Me. x

Jun 19 · Liked post

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Right. I've been sitting here for twenty minutes trying to work out how to word this and I keep deleting it. I'm 58 and I've been with my husband for thirty-one years. Thirty-one. And I cannot for the life of me find the words to tell him that sex has become genuinely painful. Not uncomfortable. Painful. I just sort of... go quiet and hope he doesn't notice and then feel awful about it afterwards for multiple reasons. I've got a GP appointment next week and I've been scribbling down notes on my phone because I know I'll get in there and my brain will go completely blank. What I'm trying to say to the doctor is something like: dryness that's got worse over the past year, pain during sex, and something that feels almost like a UTI afterwards even when it isn't one. I looked it up and I think the term I want is GSM? I wrote it down so I don't forget to actually say it out loud rather than just hinting and hoping she picks it up. The appointment feels manageable. It's the conversation with my husband that doesn't. Has anyone actually found the words for that bit? Not the doctor bit, the other bit. x

Jun 19 · Liked post

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58 and I am sitting here with a piece of paper trying to work out how to describe what has been happening down there to a GP I have seen maybe twice. How do you even start that sentence. "It hurts" feels too vague. "Sex is painful" feels too exposing. "Dryness" sounds like I'm talking about a biscuit. I've been writing things down because I know if I don't I'll walk in and say I'm fine and come out with nothing. So far my list says: discomfort, that UTI feeling that never quite turns into a UTI, and the fact that I stopped wanting to try because the anticipation of pain is worse than the pain itself. My husband hasn't said anything. Neither have I. We've both just quietly stopped and I think we're both pretending that's fine and it isn't. Does anyone have actual words they used with their GP? Not looking for a script, just. I don't know. Proof that someone said it out loud and didn't dissolve.

Jun 19 · Liked post

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47 and I keep going back and forth in my head between the patch and the gel. Not asking anyone to tell me which to pick, honestly I just want to hear what people's actual day-to-day is like with either. Like does the patch stay put in summer? Does the gel feel weird under clothes? My GP mentioned both in the same breath and then moved on before I could ask anything useful. Side thing: I've been writing down how many flushes I'm having each day because I kept underestimating when I tried to recall them at the appointment. Turns out it's more like 8 or 9 on a bad day, not the vague "quite a few" I kept saying. Sleep's a whole other chapter. Also quietly noting my caffeine and wine intake because both seem to make evenings worse. The coffee one is genuinely gutting. Anyway. Just curious about people's patch vs gel experiences, no pressure to give me a verdict on anything x

Jun 19 · Liked post

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55 and feeding a husband and two teenagers who would happily eat pasta and garlic bread every single night and honestly sometimes I just... give in. But I've been trying to quietly shift our dinners towards things with more protein without it becoming a whole announcement about mum's menopause diet. This week I did a big batch of chicken thighs on Sunday, roasted with whatever veg was lurking in the fridge, and it's genuinely carried us through three evenings in different forms. Monday it was just that. Tuesday I shredded the leftover chicken into a sort of quick curry. Wednesday I chucked the last of it into a wrap with some salad and called it a night. Nobody complained. Nobody even noticed I was doing anything differently which is exactly what I needed. The bit I wasn't expecting is that I'm not crashing at half three the way I was. I used to be absolutely useless by mid-afternoon, like someone had pulled a plug. I don't know if it's the breakfast I've been having (eggs most days now, sometimes with some smoked salmon if I'm feeling fancy) or the dinners or just... something shifting. I want to ask my GP about the energy crashes properly because they were getting bad enough that I was worried. Writing it down now because I want to be able to say when it started and what changed, otherwise I'll walk in there and forget everything. Also started doing a short walk after dinner. Ten minutes, sometimes fifteen if I'm not desperate to sit down. The dog is delighted. I feel a bit daft but it does seem to help with the bloating.

Jun 19 · Liked post

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52 and I've started writing things down before I even get to the waiting room because the last time I sat in front of my GP my mind just went completely blank. Like, I had been awake at 3am for six nights in a row and somehow when she asked how she could help I said "I've been a bit tired" and left with a leaflet on sleep hygiene. Not this time. I've got a notes app open on my phone that I've been adding to all week. Times I woke up, how long it took to get back to sleep, whether the sweating came before or after the waking (honestly still can't tell), how I felt by mid-afternoon. It looks a bit obsessive written out like that but I genuinely cannot hold this stuff in my head anymore. The thing I really want to ask about is HRT and whether it could help with the sleep specifically. I've read a bit and I know oestrogen is involved somehow but I don't know how to bring it up without sounding like I've diagnosed myself off the internet. Has anyone managed to steer a GP conversation towards that without being fobbed off? I keep rehearsing it in my head and then worrying I'll just go quiet again the second she looks at her screen. Appointment is Thursday. Fingers crossed x

Jun 19 · Liked post

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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

Jun 19 · Liked post

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Eggs at breakfast and I didn't crash at 11am. First time in weeks. That's it. That's the win. x

Jun 18 · Liked post

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58 and I genuinely didn't see it coming. That's the thing nobody warned me about. Not the dryness itself, not what it would do to me and my husband of 29 years. One day intimacy was just... ours. Comfortable. And then it wasn't, and I didn't know why, and I was too embarrassed to say anything to him or to anyone. I've started keeping a few notes on my phone. Nothing fancy. Just writing down what I'm actually experiencing so I don't go blank when I'm sitting in front of my GP and she asks how things are. Because every time I've tried to say it out loud the words fall apart. "Discomfort" sounds too mild. "Pain" sounds dramatic. I'm trying to find the right language before I even get there. I've also been paying attention to what I eat because I read somewhere that energy and confidence are connected in ways I hadn't thought about and honestly anything that makes me feel a bit more like myself is worth noting. Whether that's actually doing anything I have no idea but it gives me something to focus on that isn't just dread. Anyway. I suppose I'm posting this because I needed somewhere to put it. 29 years together and I felt completely alone with this for the best part of a year. That seems wrong. x

Jun 18 · Liked post

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55 and I want to write this down because I think I needed to read something like it about eight months ago and there was nothing. I was terrified. I genuinely thought something was catastrophically wrong with me. The sleep had gone completely, I was having flushes every hour or so overnight, and my mood was... I don't have the words. My husband didn't have the words either and that made it worse. I sat in the car outside Tesco one afternoon and cried because I couldn't remember why I'd driven there. I'm not going to sit here and tell anyone what fixed it because I don't think it works like that. What I can say is that eight weeks on from starting HRT and changing a few small things around food and getting outside most days, I had a follow-up with my GP last Tuesday and actually had good things to report. Which felt extraordinary. I had my little notes with me, which helped, because she asked what had improved and I'd have forgotten half of it if I hadn't written it down the week before. Sleep is better. Not perfect but genuinely better. The flushes are maybe two or three a night instead of constant. My mood is... recognisably mine again? I made a proper dinner three nights this week, nothing fancy, just something warm and real, and I noticed I actually enjoyed eating it. That sounds so small. It isn't small when you've been feeling like a stranger in your own kitchen for months. I still have things to sort. Told the GP I want to talk about the fatigue next time because that's the bit still lagging behind. But if you're at the beginning and you're frightened: it does move. It moved for me. That's all I've got. x

Jun 18 · Liked post

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55 and divorced and... trying to fancy myself again. That's where I've landed. Not in a delusional way. In a "I bought a dress that isn't navy and I wore it to Sainsbury's" way. Which sounds mad written down but it genuinely felt like something. The thing is I spent so long being invisible that I think I forgot I had a body at all, except when it was doing something annoying. Hot flushes. The dryness nobody warns you about. That sort of low-level anxiety that makes you cancel things. I cancelled a lot of things. I've got a GP appointment next month and I've been trying to work out how to explain that it's not just physical, it's the whole... confidence thing. The way I feel about myself now versus how I used to feel. I want her to understand that it's affecting how I live, not just how I sleep. Does that make sense? I'm going to write it down before I go in because I know I'll minimise it the second she looks at me. Anyway. The dress was green. I got a compliment from a woman on the checkout. I'm counting it. x

Jun 18 · Liked post

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There wasn't a conversation. There wasn't a moment where someone sat me down and said, by the way, this part of your life is about to quietly disappear. It just... did. Me and my husband have been together 28 years and I genuinely cannot pinpoint when things shifted but at some point I started dreading something I used to want. The dryness is part of it but it's also something harder to name. A kind of disconnection. Like my body stopped being mine in that way. I've got a GP appointment next week and I've been writing things down beforehand because I know I'll go blank the second I sit in that chair. Things like: pain, discomfort, not wanting to be touched, UTI feelings that aren't UTIs. It took me three attempts to write the list because I kept deleting it like someone was going to read my phone. I don't know what I'm hoping for. Maybe just that she doesn't look at me like it's all in my head. I'm 58, not ancient, and I'd quite like to feel like myself again. Has anyone actually talked to their GP about this stuff and been heard? x

Jun 18 · Liked post

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44 and I genuinely cannot work out if something is actually happening or if I've just finally hit the wall after years of too much. Like. The anxiety is new. Not stress-anxiety, I know what that feels like. This is more... ambient? Waking up at 4am with my heart going and nothing specific to worry about. My periods have gone a bit weird, shorter cycles, one that was only 22 days which has never happened before. And the brain fog is embarrassing, I'm a project manager, I live by my brain, and lately I'm losing words mid-sentence in meetings. But then I think: two kids, demanding job, not enough sleep, too much coffee to compensate for not enough sleep. Maybe this is just... that. Maybe I'm being dramatic. I've started writing things down because I couldn't tell anymore what was a pattern and what was just a bad week. Sleep, caffeine, how the day felt. Cut my afternoon coffee a bit and genuinely don't know if it's helped or if I'm just having a better fortnight. I want to go to my GP but I don't know how to say "I think I might be perimenopausal" at 44 without sounding like I've been down a Google rabbit hole at midnight. Which, fine, I have. But still. Does anyone have words for how they actually framed it? Without sounding like you've self-diagnosed off TikTok? x

Jun 18 · Liked post

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42 and somehow I have ended up with seven different supplement pots on my kitchen counter and I genuinely don't know how that happened. Every time I see something on Instagram I think oh maybe that's the missing piece and I buy it and then nothing changes and I just have more pots. So I've stopped. Cleared the counter. Going back to basics for a bit, eating actual proper food first, more protein, more veg, not glamorous but I haven't been doing that consistently so it feels dishonest to keep adding pills on top of a patchy diet. If I'm still struggling in a few weeks I was thinking of just trying one thing, probably magnesium because it keeps coming up, but ONE thing and actually paying attention to whether my sleep shifts at all. Writing it down so it's not just vibes. Also want to ask my GP about interactions before I add anything, I'm not on HRT yet but conversations are happening and I don't want to just casually mention six supplements at the last minute. Does anyone else bring a list to their appointment? Does it help or do they just gloss over it? x

Jun 18 · Replied to Community post

Just popping back to say thank you, especially Mara. I read all of these with a cup of tea and had a little cry, in a good way. This community is such a relief sometimes.

Jun 7 · Replied to Community post

Just popping back to say thank you, especially Susan. I read all of these with a cup of tea and had a little cry, in a good way. This community is such a relief sometimes.