Sorry, am cross-posting here (also in the menopause section) as I'm extremely anxious, and would really appreciate advice, especially from anyone medical...
I really could use some wisdom and advice on this topic from those who know a lot about perimenopause, as I have extreme health anxiety around certain things (not all things!) and this has really set me off...
I am 47. No menopause symptoms yet apart from one month last year where I randomly skipped a period. Aside from that, my periods have been like absolute clockwork my entire life, approx every 25 days or so.
Last month, my period was a bit lighter/shorter than normal and less pain than normal, but basically otherwise a normal period. Then it finished and I had around a week of of nothing. Then my breasts suddenly became really sore and I was baffled by this as it normally only happens just before my period is due, not a week after, and there were no signs (in terms of discharge or anything) that I was ovulating. Anyway, my breasts hurt a lot for about three days and then suddenly I got another period (14 days after my last period started) and my breasts stopped hurting and went back to normal.
So, basically I'm now having another period. It's definitely a light period rather than random bleeding/spotting. Blood exactly the same as my normal period - dark red/light brown. Not much of it but more than spotting, nothing unusual about it.
I know this is almost certainly just normal perimenopause starting, but having been so clockwork my whole life and having the particular anxieties I do, it's freaking me out. But I'm right in thinking aren't I that the sore boobs just preceding the bleeding and then stopping as soon as the bleeding started means this is highly likely to be hormonal rather than anything sinister?
No other symptoms of anything sinister - never had any bleeding between periods, or after sex, or anything like that. No other health complaints.
My question really is when/if I need to go to the doctor about this? Everything I read suggests it's normal, but the odd thing says 'periods less than 3 weekly need investigation'. The reason I'm asking is that my health anxiety largely stems from a traumatic episode when I was much younger when I had something massively over-investigated and it would have been far better to have left it - it was nothing and would have gone away on its own if I'd just monitored it and seen what happened for a few months. Instead I had lengthy and unnecessary investigations that ended up causing me a lot of trauma.
Please let me know all thoughts/advice.