Anyone else just UTTERLY EFFING SICK of peri?

[RipeApples]

I know there are plenty of you cos i see your threads but my GOD I am so over this shite. Not only the symptoms in the first place but the apparent need to just play it by ear as though we can just afford mentally and physically to just bob along with sometimes debilitating symptoms. Oh you think you're peri? Let's wait and see how those symptoms play out. Oh you are peri, try this gel. Oh that's not worked, let's wait and see. Oh that's too high a dose, oh let's reduce it. Oh you don't seem to be able to do your job which you've been very successful in doing for the last 25 years? Oh your symptoms are back. oh oh fucking OH.

I'm obviously in a foul mood over it as i'm ranting but even on my 'good' days (around 4 a month honestly for the last year or so- been on HRT for 18 months) I'm still agog that this is something which, to varying degrees, women will experience and we're left at the hands of uneducated GPs, having to scrape money together if need to go private to get someone to listen and even THEN the whole regime is just seemingly pot fucking luck.

I really hope I'm one of those who eventually finds my magic combination of dose, brand and delivery method but there are so many variables, alongside the changing symptoms as we age, that I really can't see it ever happening. And then seeing the thread yesterday (?) about women who are still not post menopause in their mid and even late 50s put the fear of God in me. I'm 46, around 3 years into Peri - How do you just accept you've got to suck it up? I'm so angry about the whole thing on top of being angry cos i'm permanently seemingly pre menstural. There's not even anyone i can complain to about it and that's winding me up too.

Rant over. If you've got this far, thanks for being on the receiving end. I do have friends of peri age but it seems they are all doing fine and aren't struggling like I am and if mention menopause at work, my colleagues visibly shrink away- and frankly my dh and dcs are sick of me going on about it and reading this thread back, I can see why;)

Yes it's a bagoshite.

I'm currently on day 18 of a period, it will probably stop for 5 days at some point then start again. I'm in a perpetual state of borderline anaemia. Then they may stop for 4 months in a row and I feel blissfully normal again.

Then there's the itching crawling skin arghhhhh. If I wear anything that isn't the silkiest of materials I may as well be dressed in sandpaper. Even the bedsheets feel like sackcloth.
So I'm taking an antihistamine every day to stop the itching.

I'm on year 4, 50 yrs young.

@MiddleAgedDread it's not for everyone. Just sharing what works for me.

After nearly 4 years of being on HRT I thought I had most of my symptoms under control. Bollocks. Now I have excruciating migraines once a month followed by a week of headaches. I've always suffered from headaches but these migraines are something else.

I think this is just another of the elements which has been a head fuck for me. Honestly most of my symptoms were under control for about a year. Not 100% great but notably better. And then out of nowhere, bam, here you go, have some more, have some you didn't have before and have some you did have while you're at it. How is anyone meant to stay sane in this situation!!

Omg yes, the nausea! Progesterone gives me such awful nausea, whhhhyyy? Why would our bodies even make something so essential to be so crap (like birth too, who decided birth was a good way of multiplying. Couldn't we just like lay a teeny egg or something and leave pur husbands to sit on them? Like extra large land sea horses)

None of this sounds v normal to me! Anyone suffering like this should get themselves back to the doctor. It’s not something women should just have to put up with and we don’t have to!

I stopped
I take nothing other than magnesium, vitamin d (I'm deficient), and b12 and omega 3
I never really drank, but I find even 1 or 2 has a very negative effect now, so I mostly don't bother
I use gaviscon for reflux and charcoal tablets for nausea/wind
I tend towards constipation, so sometimes take sennakot
The itchy skin is CRAZY!
I also have loads of cherry hemangiomas and skin tags since I turned 40, too :(
I've also had long covid since 2022 so lots going on there, too
My eyesight is dreadful, and the skin on my face has got brown spots 😑
Yuck

@Crushwave awful but I'm SO comforted to hear it gives someone else nausea. I'm utterly sick of feeling sick. From morning to night. Over it.

Yep eyesight shite here too! From being 20/20 until early 40s everything is now fuzzy. Is there any part of our bodies that aren't affected??? Arghjhhh.

🙋I have got a just turned 2 year old toddler to add in to the mix lol 😮aghhhh

Would you share what supplements you take - probably specific to help your symptoms but something else to look into and consider

I’d like to know how old these women were who demanded equality with men. We can’t possibly work equally when many of us are battling peri symptoms, and I can see now why women used to retire at 60.

This was when I had a mirena coil. My periods were heavy, but I didn’t realise how heavy until I had awful anaemia symptoms. I didn’t see the point of just topping up with iron, I knew I had to stop the problem.

Hard relate. Dying parents, special needs emerging for children, serious responsible job where I have to sit and show care and give time to the MH of whinging twenty somethings with literally nothing but work and themselves to stress them out, when I've been up since 5am. (I do care about them really but feel very invisible).

Always advocating for someone. Always having to have my wits about me to the highest level of skill I've ever needed to achieve. Always having to be the very calm controlled adult in the room.

In your late forties, you're always the accountable one. Always the manager, and always holding space for someone else's trauma. And with less personal capacity to do that than ever. I feel like I have to be a tank, rolling along, trying not to feel my own body and not giving it the time and respect it needs.

Nature's way is that menopause should hit when you are winding back a bit, maybe a granny and have a little time to prioritise yourself!!! All so bloody unfair. :(

I fantasise about being able to gently wake up, think "what a bad night I had of night sweats, I feel like I have flu, I'll take it easy today". And doing my little volunteer job at the charity shop, watering my plants, pilates class, then pick up a delightful grandchild from nursery for 3 hours to help out their parents. Then cook myself a light nourishing dinner, put some warm compress on my dry eyes maybe, tidy up and get an early night.

Do remember that HRT helps protect your bones and heart long term, it’s not just for current symptoms.

This is what i'm grappling with. But surely medicine has come up with a way to provide that protection for us without it making us utterly miserable? I'm about to find out anyway so i'll report back!

elvenpowers my fantasy involves jacking it all in, becoming a librarian (ignore the fact that all the libraries are closing down...), me flouncing around reading books, no one EVER asking me a question about anything (including my dcs and dh) and getting into bed at 930 (I currently don't get to sleep til 12.30 due to SEN child).

I'm also struggling at work in a similar way. Sounds like a completly different job to yours but still interacting with the great under 30s mass of young adults who frankly, when it comes to shit, do not know they are born. I am sat there on meetings feeling sick, feeling my digestive system letting me know today will be a day when i better stay near a toilet, abjectly exhausted, and all the while terrified i'm not doing my job properly, having honestly had such a good career at being good at what I do. I fear someone will notice and that will be that.

I'm only in my 30s and not formally 'diagnosed' as peri but for the past 18 months periods have gone to bollocks, I get overwhelming doom and anxiety for 2 weeks of the fucking month, my skin is flaky and dry and my downstairs is as a dry as a vulture's crotch.

I also have no idea when my period is going to start as no cycle is the same. Will the bleeding last 2 days or will it last 9 this time?? I'll be fucked if I know.

Gp says it's too early but I dunno I just feel so many things are linked to my hormones, it's awful not being taken seriously.

the thing is, people DO start peri in their 30's. Not many, granted but it does happen and you can be damn full sure if this was a male medical issue they'd be listened to. I think i actually started peri quite early, looking back i was having symptoms from around 40 but of course I didn't actually go to the gp cos i knew what i'd be told, even though my mum had her full menopuase at 40. One thing you could do, which i eventually did, they have self tests in Tescos and probably other places, they test for 'onset of menopause'. I got mine about 2 years ago and it showed i was in it. And at the point I went to the doctor for HRT. Might be worth doing, from memory they were quite cheap.

@RipeApples Solidarity. You are doing much better than you think you are xxxx

Oh I hear you so loud and clear.

I had a hysterectomy when I was about 44, the consultant left my ovaries but did say they would probably pack up quicker than they would have done otherwise.

18 months - 2 years later the hot flushes started, rapidly followed by the most horrendous anxiety which had never troubled me previously. Cried on the first (middle aged, female) GP, was sent away with a prescription for Prozac. Didn't work. Year later same thing, back to second (middle aged, female) GP who prescribed a different type of antidepressant. Didn't work. Then it was lockdown and my GP stopped functioning for about a year. Made another appointment with a (young, male) GP who took bloods, said there was nothing wrong with me and prescribed folic acid. WTF?

It was only through reading threads on sites like this and people like Davina McCall and Kirsty Wark raising awareness of what they had been through that the penny dropped. Finally got a telephone appointment with a 4th (middle aged, male) GP and practically demanded HRT patches and he agreed. That was about 3 years ago and I am so much better on patches, not 100% perfect but I can cope. Without HRT I was in a very dark place and I really don't think I'd still be here if I was unmedicated and still feeling so awful.

I am VERY angry, disappointed and let down by the THREE medical professionals in my surgery who, when presented with a woman aged 49 or 50, who had never had mental health/anxiety problems before, and who had had a hysterectomy, didn;t have the common sense to join the dots. That is utterly shit, however you try to cut it.

I had no idea they existed, the gp did run a hormone panel a while back but they told me I had to test on like day 2 or 3 of my cycle and my issue was I can't forecast those dates to book the blood test and you can't ring on the day or the day before to book in. So my bloods were taken at the wrong time on my cycle and they've never tried again since.

That's a really good shout though I'm gonna have a look online and see if I can get one as a starting point.

charityshopchic that sounds absolutely horrendous and I'm not sure I'd ever get over that. It's so far away from good enough, it's unreal. After the rigmarole you've been through I'm so glad the patches are working for you. I hope to be in the same position at some point soon

That is almost unbelievably poor. I'm so sorry that you had to go through all of that..

I've now got a serious heart condition and also had a Heart attack because of fluctuating oestrogen.
Thanks ovaries.