Husband has never heard of HRT. I find it odd...

[NoKnit]

So I'm a woman of that kind of age and I've got a gynaecologist appointment next week and the doctor has brought up HRT before.

When I was talking to my husband over the weekend he had never heard of it 🙄Is his head really in the sand? I'm not expecting him to be fully read up on it but honestly his reaction was a bit like I'd just told him I was thinking of putting after sun on my sunburn 😅

He really had no idea and I'm not sure he gets hormonal changes when women go through the menopause. It's not that he is dim either, university educated, software engineer.

Not really an AIBU but isn't it strange he knows nothing about it?

There would have been articles about HRT and studies with possible connection to breast cancer. Articles about health benefits of HRT with respect to heart disease and osteoporosis and other benefits. Articles about HRT shortages (particularly during COVID so not that long ago). Articles about whether HRT should be free in England. Articles about menopause in the workplace and new employment rules coming into force. Difficulties for some women persuading doctors they need HRT. All these items were on BBC News so would have featured on front page of BBC News website. Davina McCall amongst others have recently done programmes on menopause where HRT will have been mentioned. She has been a prominent campaigner and has appeared on BBC News website talking about it. This is just to name just a few articles, there have been many more. If you regularly read the news in this country you can’t have missed them

@sittingonabeach I have probably seen and read some articles but with any news article if it isn't really anything relevant to someones life then it's not going to be something you take much interest in and necessarily remember much about it.

How old you?
I wasn’t able to read in 1986 (3 years old) let alone the Today!

But there really has been many headlines about HRT in recent years. Headlines!! And yet despite reading the news “daily” you don’t seem to have registered them

I am 51.
I have heard of HRT but I haven't really taken much notice of what it is for because I have never felt my menopause has required any medical intervention.
I know for some women they do need some help so they go and see a doctor.
I have never felt any need to read articles and study in depth about any medications that I have never needed.
That doesn't mean I haven't heard of them.
There are 1000s of headlines I have read but not taken much notice of because they aren't relevant to me.

Right so you grasp the coverage has been extensive but you just haven’t clocked or been inclined to read. Ok that makes more sense

I’m impressed you were reading The Today at 11 years old!

Exactly!
The same as there are regular news articles about sport or soap operas or cars or 1001 other things that I know are there but don't necessarily need to know about in depth.

My parents bought it 😂
At my primary school we did topics and my topic one term in 3rd or 4th year juniors (Year 5 or 6 these days) was "Newspapers" and we all had to bring in a copy of the paper our parents got and compare them (which pretty much all the parents did).
Some of the work we did was writing different newspaper style articles.
We were age 9-11.
Reading newspapers was quite normal at that age.

So you acknowledge that the fact you haven’t read this extensive coverage doesn’t mean that it hasn’t well and truly been there

I never said it wasn't 😂
Well "extensive" might be an exaggeration in my personal opinion but obviously there's been media information about it out there.
The same as 1001 other things that exist in life.
It's impossible to take an interest in everything.

do they?

It is
but as you have acknowledged - you don’t clock it or read it because not of any interest to you

Have you not had chats with your girlfriends over the years about menopause and HRT quite a bit?

Not really to be honest 🤷

I'm 60 now.

Of course I am aware of HRT, but I haven't felt the need to take it so haven't researched it in great detail. My menopause only happened 3 years ago as I turned 57. The problems I had were heavy, flooding periods caused by fibroids for about a decade prior to that. No hot flushes or other stuff though.

My DH was definitely aware of what the menopause was, and I am sure he would have at least heard of HRT, though would have known little about it in any great detail. It just hardly featured in his life at all, and I highly doubt that his mother would ever have discussed it with him.

I can remember my Dad suggesting my Mum gets on HRT 30 years ago 😆. That didn't go down too well!

You have a group of close girlfriends who you regularly socialise with?

I do.
We have plenty of other things to talk about though 😂

Some of them will be on HRT
they just have chosen never to discuss it with you or this group of friends

Exactly!
Generally I have found that people don't go around discussing their personal medical life.
And I expect a group of male friends (ie the OP and his mates) will be even less inclined to be chatting about HRT.
I mean I take 4 medications daily but I don't think I have ever told my friends. Why would they need to know?

I think it's quite easy to be woefully ignorant about things the opposite sex know and take for granted. I've been on here for better part of two decades so am properly better informed than most men. DP has been surprised how well informed about peri menopause I am, so Mumsnet has served me well.

But trying to think about what I don't know (which is quite difficult, how do you work out what you have no knowledge of) and I've just realised I have no real idea what a smear is. I think I know the purpose (although I'll have a Google after this and find out if I'm wrong), and I know they have to be done periodically. But the actual process of one? Not a flipping clue.

It works the other way round as well. Not a medical one but it took DP until her mid 30s before she realised "morning wood" was a thing. She noticed I had an erection upon waking one morning and said "You'd better have been dreaming about me". When I said I hadn't been dreaming of anything, she assumed I must have been thinking about someone else and didn't want to tell her. It took a lot of explaining, googling and demonstrating over the next few mornings before she understood and I was off the hook.

It was amazing to me that she lacked what I consider a fairly basic bit of knowledge. I've been waking up with this irritation for as long as I can remember (and it really is irritating when you wake up desperate for a pee and have to wait for it to disappear), it was joked about in school, on TV, mentioned in sex education, and more to the point DP had been with me for about 7 years at this point, and had 3 previous long term relationships. And somehow "Men wake up with erections" just wasn't information she'd ever come across.

With you perhaps

But certainly discussing menopause, HRT and generally health issues is very common amongst a group of close girlfriends in their forties and fifties.

I mean I take 4 medications daily but I don't think I have ever told my friends. Why would they need to know

I take levothyrsonine daily . My girlfriend’s know that because we spoke prior to my diagnosis re my symptoms then post diagnosis. They supported me

I obviously have very different friends 😂

I would be surprised if none of them don’t talk about it - just not with you