Am I running out of options?

[AcuQueen]

Hiya
I hope somebody will be able to shed some light... I've spent the past year trying to find some appropriate treatment for my peri symptoms. The worst of these by far is constant myalgia (muscle pain), lower back pain and stiffness.
This started with me going to see Annie Evans (now retired) who prescribed Mirena and Sandrena gel. I've got on well with the Mirena but the gel only helped for a short time and then all symptoms came back, including sweats/hot flushes and pain. I went to the GP and they suggested Elleste Solo 40 which I tried but again my symptoms all can back after a few weeks. By the autumn I was onto the higher dose Elleste patches and for a couple of months felt fantastic. However, my pain has returned during the past week and I'm so fed up about it!
I've been visiting a physio since October and doing my exercises religiously which I thought was helping but now I feel like I'm nearly back to square one.
Has anyone else experienced this? Am so disappointed. Would it be worth trying tablets to see if they work better for me? I know I might be expecting too much but am sick of being in pain and don't find painkillers to be that helpful tbh.
Many thanks!

It sounds disappointing but something does puzzle me.....HRT is not a 'treatment' for myalgia. My understanding (from friends who've have muscle pain) is that HRT helped some but not others.

If the dose of gel didn't help long term, did you increase the dose up to the 4 pumps daily max? If you used a higher dose it may have helped- but maybe you were!

Have you considered a 100mcg patch? How far into meno are you?

Personally my feeling is tablets aren't the answer because a lot of the hormones are lost during digestion.

Have you thought about anything like acupuncture? Pilates? Chiropractor? Osteopath? Alexander technique? (just grasping at straws here.)

Thanks for getting back to me Polly.

I think you're right - it's probably about me managing my expectations. Since being on the higher dose my hot flushes/sweats and feelings of gloom have subsided so in many ways the HRT patches have done their job very effectively. It's just disappointing that the all-over pain went away for a while and then returned. It really got my hopes up!

Thanks so much :)

You don't say what dose you were on.

The dose is more important than the type of HRT for you it seems.
Sandrena is 1mg per sachet. If you used Oestrogel - same stuff- you could go to 3mgs a day ( 4 pumps.) Have you tried this?

Worth a try?