I wear enough patches to wallpaper my entire arse. Evorel 100 plus a quarter of another Evorel. After many tests and changes of dosage and gel, I was put on this most recently. It doesn’t seem to have made much difference at all to the amount of spare oestrodiol sloshing around in my blood as compared to being on oestrogel, but I am less likely to suffer uncontrollable urges to beat idiots around the head when I meet them. Maybe this is because I am being better controlled by my HRT (although I am not sure I like the idea too much of being controlled by anything!) or maybe it’s because I’ve encountered fewer idiots this year. Who knows.
Anyway, I have 2 other problems now. The first is that these patches are enormous. I’ve lost a bit of weight recently, and they take up a greater percentage of my spare bum flesh than ever before. This means I have difficulty hiding them under a bikini. I realise this is a problem not many will have, but due to the happy circumstances of my work, I am able to spend about 2 days a week on a beach in a bikini. So I’m putting the patches right on my bum cheek. I don’t want them hanging out of the side, or the great annoying sticky patches you can’t get off and that attract all the dark fluff off your trousers. Don’t tell me to clean it with baby oil - I work in a ‘put your entire washbag in tiny bottles in a small seethrough bag and pop it in the scanner’ environment. I barely have room for my toothpaste, let alone a bottle of baby oil! My newly-bony backside is now becoming irritated by this placement, and I can feel them there all the time. I’m getting the urge to scratch them a lot, they itch and I can feel them crinkling there like I’ve got a bit of sweet wrapper stuck in my pants all the time. I spend a lot of time on my bum - I sit down for hours on end at work and I also do a ‘sitting down’ sport at quite high level. I’d prefer not to have an itchy bum all the time.
Has anyone else had skin irritation from patches, and did swapping back to a gel help? I work across many time zones (am currently 8 hours outside of my home zone) so the patch only needing to be applied twice a week has helped there. Is anyone a regular swimmer who has any suggestions as to where to put the patches where they won’t be seen? How big are the Evorel compared to the Estrodot - would that swap be a better option?
Thank you in advance to anyone who had overcome a similar first world problem. Fucking annoying, this menopause shit, isn’t it?