I turned 40 this year and am still having regular and normal periods. I take 20mg of fluoxetine for anxiety, have done since my daughter was born and it has always worked very well for me.
Most of the time, I am utterly miserable. I’m rarely getting any joy from anything. Every day is a trudge from start to finish and I am more irritable than I’ve ever been in my life. I’ve never had a temper but now I get frustrated by everything and everyone and find it very hard to control my reactions (although thankfully thus far I’ve mostly managed it, but I’m definitely a lot snappier than I ever have been before). I have no energy and no drive to do anything, even things I enjoyed before. This is all exacerbated by the fact that I can’t sleep – I wake up any time between 1am-4am and rarely get back to sleep before 6.30am, about an hour before the alarm goes off for the day. So I’m running on 4-5 hours most of the time. I couldn’t tell you what wakes me up and I’ve tried all the usual sleep habit / diet / exercise things. The doctor has just prescribed me some antihistamines which I should have by Monday so perhaps that will help. But I’ve had poor sleep before and it’s never left me feeling so joyless and, to be frank, bloody grumpy.
Does this sound like it could be peri? Does it tally with anyone else’s experience? Or should I be seeking to increase my medication dosage?