Not too personal at all, and the more we describe it, the faster more of us will recognise it!
Fairly abruptly I developed:
A constant physical sensation of terror, even though there was nothing wrong. The heart pounding feeling you might get the night before a long planned expensive family holiday and you’re just falling asleep when you realise that you forgot to renew anyone’s passport. But ALL. THE. TIME.
Insomnia. Sometimes I’d be lucky to get an hour at dawn. The heart sinking feeling of hearing the blackbirds every morning because you are still awake.
Obviously, depression, because how could you not?
Weight gain, because I was exhausted and eating anything that wasn’t nailed down.
Then FINALLY, I recognised a pattern of my temperature rising and falling during the night from normal and comfortable to feeling like I was about to die of heat, and then it would fall again to normal, and about 20 minutes later, I’d feel myself get hotter and hotter again.
I was googling why kind of hideous and presumably fatal disease this pattern heralded and the internet was all “well, when you’re coping with menopause and hot flushes…” and I was “ohhhhhhh…. I see. 😳”
Rang my GP and she didn’t doubt me for a moment and prescribed HRT there and then, and I recovered in 2 - 3 weeks. All she said was if it didn’t work to come back to her. But it worked fine. I’m on oestrogen only because my Mirena is pretty new.
I thought I was dying. I tried therapy, every herbal remedy under the sun, it was awful. I was so embarrassed not to have pieced it together sooner!
I’m not saying it’s the answer to every fir everyone, but if you are over 38, I would address this as a possibility sooner rather than later, because a few weeks of HRT will either help or it won’t, and no harm done.