HRT - nobody gives a fuck about women

[Missproportionate]

Angry face 🤬

Can't get Estrogen Gel for love or money. Having been on it a year I know I can't function without it - as in I have to lie perfectly still and not move for hours on end due to vertigo, flushes dizziness, palpitations... (not posting for advice as I've done lots of posting about that elsewhere and researched myself coz GPs know fuck all)

I have spent many, many hours I won't get back being misdiagnosed, minimised, etc before finally getting a prescription. Now it's totally unavailable and I have to spend hours on the phone getting GPs and pharmacists to re-prescribe whatever estrogen is available within a 20 mile radius, taking time off work, cancelling appointments for myself and all the people in my family I care for (sandwich generation of course 🙄 - = I provide free care for elderly rels as well as DCs)

I've had it and angry. Aibu to think this is a fundamentally mysoginistic problem I have and I feel like this stuff is being witheld by almost deliberate means?

Even when I do get it they won't give me enough as they are too stupid to do the sums. The pharmacist managed to work it out so I only got 2 weeks worth (when GP agreed to 3 months) and now I'm off on another phone spree round the pharmacies!
Congratulations if you've read all that. I felt this board the only one that will sympathise!

I'm also angry at the general schooling of women into health woo because we don't get our health problems properly addressed and the women I know who won't take HRT and suffer this shit because they 'don't want to take hormones' or 'GP said not suitable for me' or 'I will suffer and then take this ineffective herb and pretend it helps'

Like the sound of womens health centres. Realistically though that's never gonna happen is it? NHS is failing and there are cuts everywhere, so whose going to authorise this huge expense?

I have been failed repeatedly re HRT. Years begging, quibbling over dosages, referrals to clinic, then GP's overriding clinics suggestions. and then even last week unhelpful / dismissive GP questioning the new bone scan I've had done that shows osteopenia which is pre osteoporosis.

Makes my blood boil.

Yes please Justine.

Womens health centres could be set up to be cost neutral, particularly if the health benefits are taken into account.

Imagine how much more productive the female workforce wpuld be if our period and menopause symptoms were properly understood and controlled.

Womens Health Centres would be amazing and definitely an issue Mumsnet could champion.

My current bugbear is the fact I haven't been able to access my contraceptive of choice since the start of COVID. You can guarantee men wouldn't put up with this shit so why should we.

We need a new political party run by women to centre women in policy making. Men have been the default since time began, it's time for a change!

Yes, this is what we need. I can really get behind a campaign like this. Reading about all these women suffering because of the shortage of HRT is making me so angry about the way women are dismissed as second class people or prop humans for males.

This makes me very happy to see.

Actually, thinking about this...

Women's Health Centres... Women aren't a minority though: We're over 50% of the population. Is it beyond the wit of humankind to cater for over 50% of the population in actual standard health centres. I mean, I'm getting fed up with GPs (male and female) not knowing the first thing about women's problems... why shouldn't my GP know that at 47 and feeling hot flushes and anxiety, a woman is probably menopausal and not 'just' anxious and in need of antidepressants??? it's actually not a specialism is it??

Not that I don't want the Women's Health Centre, but I think we need to be careful not to be couching this as some kind of niche thing. General Health Centres need changing surely.

I am going to read the link now and its probably all in there :-)

51% = majority

And here's the link to the podcast @BenCooperisaGod posted

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0bvjdbx]

There are other medications in short supply and these are getting no attention at all and actually it's getting quite scary

I have avoided any hospital stays since I got my latest medication about 7 years ago

I really don't want to be emergency admitted again

It's not just HRT . It's a much bigger problem

This comes hard on the heels of a shortage of the most commonly prescribed (cheapest) tablet form, and a combined patch that manufactures just stopped producing for a while with no obvious alternative.

The thing that worries me about centres for women's issues is that it separates it further from women's general health and deskills general practice so that it appears there is no connection which will have further effects.

Women's Health Centres would be amazing. I was lucky to be registered with a large GP practice which has educated its medical practitioners well on menopause and has a specific HRT nurse and runs menopause clinics.

But recently I took DD (16) to see a GP about escalating painful menstrual cramps and the GP sounded very uninformed and since then I have been reading up on menstrual and gynae issues and learning how long women wait to get any diagnosis or treatment if they have ongoing issues which start in their teenage years. We have wonderfully complex bodies and we deserve to be treated by clinicians who are experts in their workings.

This ^

Pharmacists are trying to get the law changed to allow them to make amendments to prescriptions for HRT (without needing to go back and forth with GP) so they can give what they do have available. Not a solution, but should help women by not having to spend so much time trying to sort the problem themselves.

Such a frustrating problem, hoping the supply issues ease soon but I’m not hopeful as these issues with HRT have got worse and worse over the past decade or so

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-61227712

sorry to hear that @mudgetastic - I know there's that too - family members feeling same

This is a fantastic idea.

I tried every GP in my surgery, male, female, young and old and I only managed to get HRT when I was 50 despite going with many many symptoms for the previous 10 years. Even then the GP gave me the wrong instructions about how to take the progesterone.

@JustineMumsnet yes I'd be very much interested in this campaign!

I only started hrt in the autumn and I've been juggling double patches or cutting up 1.5 patches to make up the prescription as there's no 50s, the boxes come through in drips and drabs.

(I also can't get my old user name back ... not sure what's going on there?)

Absolutely Missproportionate 👏

I've got two months of HRT left and after that if this issue is ongoing I'm stuffed for work. Cant manage without them at all. But doubt my workplace will let me be off sick until whenever supplies make it to my pharmacy.

Really bloody worried about it.
The last time there was a shortage I had to go from gp to chemist, back to gp about 13 times. Frankly that was ridiculous.

I am wondering if nothing is done, just how many angry, tired, frustrated women will be marching. Unless we're all asleep or our limbs ache too much or the flushes prevent us even getting dressed.

Op I 100% agree with you. It’s utter misogyny and if these treatments were necessary for men to be able to function healthily the issue would be sorted.

And to all the people who say “ah at least Boris knows what a woman is!”, do you think his government will actually put its cock on the block ajd earmark money for womens’s clinics?

Also @Missproportionate just to say I hope you can get hold of some soon and feel more like yourself you poor thing.

Apparently not. I know some who seem to have tons of the stuff. They are rather chirpy about it on social media.

I am struggling too. Like you I am prescribed a two weeks supply. The pharmacy will only reorder 1 week before I run out and then I find out they have no stock. Have to go back to doctors for a prescription for alternative and try to find that. I feel like I am constantly trying to find stock in my area. Two weeks supply is ridiculous when it is something you take constantly.

The other huge issue I came up against was the absolute lack of information for women who are breastfeeding and need hrt.

It turns out transdermal is safer than the combined contraceptive pill and the perssaries, which can be prescribed when feeding, although not usually when establishing bf in the first 6 months. It also turns out transdermal oestrogen can be a pnd treatment.

I have been feeding for longer than most but I know so many older women in my position. I put off seeking help for a very long time as there was simply no info and it looked like I'd have to stop.

(And both times when I stopped or night weaned, symptoms got much worse so that wouldn't have been the issue. Without knowing it I was entering peri as I had my kids. Having number 2 helped lots of symptoms obviously and delayed it all for a bit.)

It should be so very hard to find out this stuff.

Bears repeating again, it SHOULDN'T be this hard to find out information, gain the medication nor get diagnosed and prescribed what we need.

Bears repeating again, it SHOULDN'T be this hard to find out information, gain the medication nor get diagnosed and prescribed what we need.