Everol conti - struggling

[Chittering]

I'm 49 and post menopausal. I have been taking vagifem for a year because of atrophy symptoms. It helps enormously and I now take it every other day.However I felt that I needed some extra help with soreness and asked for systemic hrt 3 months ago.
I have been on everol conti patches since then. The nurse practitioner has told me that I need to keep taking them for 6 months for the symptoms to settle.
I am enjoying having no hot flushes or night sweats. I have found that my joint aches have gone. I also feel that the atrophy is under control
That's all good. BUT I find that I have a low mood, Im anxious and angry with other people and myself and I am suddenly awake for hours every night. My sex drive hasn't improved at all. And I am bleeding on and off. The.bleeding started a month ago..it's not lots. It's more like spotting on and off. The nurse practitioner told me that the bleeding should.have all gone by 6 months. I didn't mention the low mood,.but it's bothering me.
Is this normal for everol conti? I don't know whether to stop taking it but I don't want to do hot flushes again. Is there anything else I could try?

Hi Chittering, so sorry I’ve not been on the site for a while and just seen your post.

I was started on combined HRT tablets when I stopped having my periods at age 52 and then they discontinued the ones I was happy using so my doctor tried to change the tablets to Kliofem which I’d heard really bad reports about so I didn’t even touch them. My friend kept raving about patches so then I tried Evorel patches but that was four years ago. After five months of bleeding on and off and some of it quite heavy, I came off them as it was obvious that the bleeding wasn’t going to go away. TBH they did nothing for me and did not improve my sex drive at all. I can’t remember having moods on them but in any case as I was bleeding on and off I can’t imagine that would have helped with my wellbeing and surely that would cause you some discomfort in bed? In the end I just packed HRT in as I hated going to my GP who was crap he just prescribed the cheapest nastiest stuff out that he could and every time I went the blood pressure machine came out because the oestrogen in the tablets increased my blood pressure so I ended up spending tons of money on not just the HRT but also the monthly blood pressure tablets (Ramipril which made me cough - followed by Losartan - which incidentally made me ill too). You could always go back and complain to your Practitioner and ask to try something else, or ask to swap doctors there. The trouble is we don’t complain enough and we are paying to suffer too!
In the end I joined another surgery which had been recommended to me as I lost faith in my money grabbing GP who didn’t believe me when I told him about the losartan giving me continual colds and asthma (which I’d never had before), as upper respiratory diseases was such a little known side effect. Although I don’t take HRT in tablet or patch form now as my hot sweats etc settled down after time anyway (I’m 59 and I take black cohosh which works for me), I now just take a Gina pessary twice a week and topical cream (Ovestin) externally for vaginal dryness which suits me. But I still need to use lube which is annoying and messy but sex is not as painful and uncomfortable as not using any form of HRT at all. Incidentally when I was on all forms of systemic HRT my sex drive never got any better with any of it. So I don’t really know what the answer is but for me personally, HRT isn’t the all singing dancing thing it’s made out to be. It suits some people and some it doesn’t.