Endometriosis returned with a vengeance on HRT

[ButWhysTheRumGone]

Anyone else? I’m lying here awake unable to sleep due to pain. I’ve just refilled my hot water bottle and taken buscopan. I take paracetamol and dihydrocodeine 4 times a day and haven’t been bothered in the night by pain for about a decade. The last month or so I’ve been waking up in pain and tonight it’s dawned on me that this is my old friend endo. I’m nearly 50 and not had a period in over a year. I’m on oestrogen gel 2 pumps each night, vagifem nightly, and progesterone 100mg vaginally at night. I’ve been on the combo for a few months now but the pain is in the last month. I thought it was a disuse effect if something else but I’ve stopped that and the pain hasn’t gone and I’ve finally placed it as endo pain. It’s been so long since I’ve been like this that I didn’t recognise it. Endo wrecked my life for decades and I celebrated when told I was through peri because I thought I’d be pain free. How wrong I was.
I’ll be seeing my GP to see if the HRT can be tweaked but in the meantime does anyone have any advice please? I can’t take anti inflammatories due to asthma and gastric issues. I’ll start taking the buscopan regularly now. Heat helps. I do a lot of walking and eat healthily, mostly. No caffeine. No alcohol. No smoking or vaping. Not much fun these days!

The only menopause symptoms I seem to have are my words coming out wrong, anxiety, constipation.

Well I got about 3 hours sleep and feel like death warmed up now. Ds is back at school and the school run is an hours walk in the rain 😩

I have endo too. I hope your GP can help you. So sorry for you.

You could double the utrogestan, so take 200mg a day. There's no reason to wait until you see the GP to do this (but do still see the GP).

Maybe try taking it orally too?

I had suspected endo when I started HRT and the endo clinic at my hospital said to balance the estrogen with progesterone. My menopause specialist said to double the utrogestan to do this.

I take 200mg orally continuously.

But you should still see the GP for sure.

My endo specialist has said when I start HRT I will need oral progesterone on top of my mirena coil so I guess you can take more of that

HRT is not compulsory.

Progesterone has always made it worse and I’m very intolerant to it. It gives me vile moods orally hence taking it vaginally.

Have a read around estrogen dominance, and endo being a symptom of this. It’s possible the E is fuelling the fire….

What about a mirena plus the vaginal?

i didn’t tolerate the mirena to the point it was out 3 hours after going in! Never again. I’m hoping the GP will be useful. In the meantime I might swap the timings to the morning rather than bedtime seeing as it’s the nights the pain is worse.

Do you have to take HRT?

I’ve got a GP appointment this morning and am hoping she can suggest something to help. I slept like the dead but woke up in pain. I’m constipated too but that’s been for years now since peri. I’m prediabetic and supposed to eat less carbs but the less carbs I eat the more constipated I get. There isn’t enough food moving through my system to move stuff along.

I have a UTI. If my symptoms resolve with antibiotics I’ll be so relieved that it’s not endo making an evil come back. I’m being sent for bloods and ultrasound of my pelvis and kidneys. Fun times.