Hey
I could really do with some advice. I’m 50 years old and 18 months post menopausal. I only started on HRT on 8th July this year. I didn’t have too many in the way of physical symptoms, terrible itchy skin, on and off joint pain and feeling hot rather than hot flushes or night sweats. What drove me to it was a rapid decline in my mental health, namely the usual “can’t be arsed”, lack of confidence, the rages, increased stress and worsening anxiety and intrusive thoughts. To add I’m on Citalopram 20mg for over a decade for a pre existing anxiety condition which has been incredibly well managed on these all that time and I’ve been living my best life.
My starting dose was 100mg micronised progesterone daily and 1 pump of oestrogel. Very quickly I felt better and it was amazing having peace after such a long time. The only downside I would say is that I did notice it affected my sleep negatively. After one month I went up to 2 pumps. All went well till around 5 weeks after this when I started experiencing the morning anxiety again, this waxed and waned over a period of weeks and I had a review with my GP last week by which point I was starting to get rather frazzled with ongoing anxiety and jitters. To cut a long story short she has referred me to a menopause NHS specialist as she believes I’m intolerant to Progesterone. At the same time she suggested I upped my oestrogen to 3 pumps, this was 10 days ago, so I did. Initially my sleep improved, anxiety no worse but no better. However in the coming days I was getting increasingly emotional and crying at the drop of a hat and low mood. I ignored this as I thought it was natural to have a “bedding” in phase of increasing the dose. But it has got increasingly and quite rapidly worse, to the point where my anxiety is now lasting all day, my mood is so low and I could, given the chance spend my entire day crying. I’ve really struggled at work today and was borderline panic attack.
So I don’t know where I am now, is it the Progesterone? Is it the oestrogen? I thought being post meno I would need more oestrogen but perhaps not. I’m so confused, I have to try and manage this on my own until I go to see the NHS doc and god knows how long that will be. I have today dropped to 2 pumps on the basis that things have got worse since I increased. Any advice welcome x