Post by susan on Oct 4, 2012 15:07:26 GMT
This is going to sound a bit odd, but I think I can remember when it started. I was on holiday abroad, woke up one morning and started having pins & needle sensations in my fingertips. I was 43 at the time. I spent the next three or four years being investigated for joint aches & pain that varied from mild to very severe and debilitating.
I was seen by a private Rheumatologist who described my condition as perimenopausal arthritis & I remember him saying that HRT (which I knew nothing about) would not help and it would go on it’s own in 7 years time and to take up swimming! Great! My timelines are not good but it was around 2001/2002 which was the height of all the HRT scares being reported worldwide.
I had to press hard for referral to an NHS Rheumatologist I suspect my GP deliberately didn’t refer me initially - lots of talk about letters being lost between the Surgery & the Hospital that didn’t ring true. I finally got to see someone who was good in his field & was given a diagnosis of osteoarthritis & Fibromyalgia. The former described as wear & tear of the joints, the later of which means unexplained pain.
The combination of the 2 conditions made me convinced I had Rheumatoid Arthritis as my pain was so bad & I insisted on being tested for this even when tests showed negative I was still not convinced and decided I had seronegative rheumatoid arthritis – I still worry about this now. I would urge anyone that gets severe joint pain at onset of perimenopause to be tested appropriately for things like RA as this is not a condition to tough out in the way some can menopause and can be devastating and destructive, so needs proper medical intervention.
I now think that these conditions were both triggered by perimenopause & to this day wonder if I had been offered HRT at the outset they may have been stopped in their tracks.
By 47 I was having severe hot flushes & erratic periods, longer and longer gaps between them and dwindling out by the time I was 50. Thankfully I never had the severe bleeding towards the end of my periods like many talk of and that is often dealt with by a Mirena coil, I just had the old brown blood (yuck) that women talk of, then nothing.
I kind of thought that was it & it was all over for me, how little did I know.
I really didn’t feel 100% for the next three years, still getting mood swings, health anxiety, low self esteem, general feeling of being old, lack of libido but the final straw was crippling vaginal atrophy.
I was googling away like mad as I had no idea what this feeling of someone having shoved a red hot poker inside me was when I came upon the mother ship.
Did a load of reading had a light bulb moment and realised I wanted and needed systemic HRT but to get that I would need to focus on Vasomotor Symptoms i.e. hot flushes and night sweats otherwise I wouldn’t have a cat in hells chance of getting it these days & would be fobbed off with Anti-depressants which I thought would be the final nail in the coffin of my sex drive so was the last thing I wanted. I had already been on a low dose of 10mg amitryptyline in an attempt to control the Fibromyalgia pain for some years.
Initially made the mistake of stressing the Vaginal Atrophy (it was horrendous) at first and was just going to be given topical oestrogen, I was panicky as I felt mine was so bad and I was well into menopause that I might need both so talked a lot about hot flushes too .
She did get me to try a thrush treatment first and did a dip test for a urine infection, but at the third or maybe fourth appointment she cracked and prescribed Klio-fem tablets. I was confident about taking a continuous HRT as I had been 3 years without a period and was 53.
It killed of my remaining hot flushes almost instantly but unfortunately after 6 in it was flaring my IBS so much I had to go back to her.
We had an intelligent discussion as to if it was either the 2 mgs of estradiol that was too much for my stomach & bowels or if it was the progesterone which was norethisterone.
Instead of fudging it she just said there is no way of knowing, so changed both and prescribed Femoston Conti which is only 1 mg of estradiol and different progesterone – dydrogesterone. This was enough once again to deal with my physical symptoms and I was already settled on vagifem twice a week.
This worked for over a year, but I had spotting on the continuous progesterone so went over to FemSeven Conti patches, she suggested Evorel but I wanted to avoid noerthisterone just in case it caused problems and have been on this ever since.
I believe that HRT works on anxiety and hormonal depression but I think it takes longer to address these issues than the physical ones, but would argue the case for HRT over AD’s with any GP or Gynaecologist as it is something I feel strongly about. It takes a bit of patience for HRT to address mood issues but it is worth that patience.
xxxx
I was seen by a private Rheumatologist who described my condition as perimenopausal arthritis & I remember him saying that HRT (which I knew nothing about) would not help and it would go on it’s own in 7 years time and to take up swimming! Great! My timelines are not good but it was around 2001/2002 which was the height of all the HRT scares being reported worldwide.
I had to press hard for referral to an NHS Rheumatologist I suspect my GP deliberately didn’t refer me initially - lots of talk about letters being lost between the Surgery & the Hospital that didn’t ring true. I finally got to see someone who was good in his field & was given a diagnosis of osteoarthritis & Fibromyalgia. The former described as wear & tear of the joints, the later of which means unexplained pain.
The combination of the 2 conditions made me convinced I had Rheumatoid Arthritis as my pain was so bad & I insisted on being tested for this even when tests showed negative I was still not convinced and decided I had seronegative rheumatoid arthritis – I still worry about this now. I would urge anyone that gets severe joint pain at onset of perimenopause to be tested appropriately for things like RA as this is not a condition to tough out in the way some can menopause and can be devastating and destructive, so needs proper medical intervention.
I now think that these conditions were both triggered by perimenopause & to this day wonder if I had been offered HRT at the outset they may have been stopped in their tracks.
By 47 I was having severe hot flushes & erratic periods, longer and longer gaps between them and dwindling out by the time I was 50. Thankfully I never had the severe bleeding towards the end of my periods like many talk of and that is often dealt with by a Mirena coil, I just had the old brown blood (yuck) that women talk of, then nothing.
I kind of thought that was it & it was all over for me, how little did I know.
I really didn’t feel 100% for the next three years, still getting mood swings, health anxiety, low self esteem, general feeling of being old, lack of libido but the final straw was crippling vaginal atrophy.
I was googling away like mad as I had no idea what this feeling of someone having shoved a red hot poker inside me was when I came upon the mother ship.
Did a load of reading had a light bulb moment and realised I wanted and needed systemic HRT but to get that I would need to focus on Vasomotor Symptoms i.e. hot flushes and night sweats otherwise I wouldn’t have a cat in hells chance of getting it these days & would be fobbed off with Anti-depressants which I thought would be the final nail in the coffin of my sex drive so was the last thing I wanted. I had already been on a low dose of 10mg amitryptyline in an attempt to control the Fibromyalgia pain for some years.
Initially made the mistake of stressing the Vaginal Atrophy (it was horrendous) at first and was just going to be given topical oestrogen, I was panicky as I felt mine was so bad and I was well into menopause that I might need both so talked a lot about hot flushes too .
She did get me to try a thrush treatment first and did a dip test for a urine infection, but at the third or maybe fourth appointment she cracked and prescribed Klio-fem tablets. I was confident about taking a continuous HRT as I had been 3 years without a period and was 53.
It killed of my remaining hot flushes almost instantly but unfortunately after 6 in it was flaring my IBS so much I had to go back to her.
We had an intelligent discussion as to if it was either the 2 mgs of estradiol that was too much for my stomach & bowels or if it was the progesterone which was norethisterone.
Instead of fudging it she just said there is no way of knowing, so changed both and prescribed Femoston Conti which is only 1 mg of estradiol and different progesterone – dydrogesterone. This was enough once again to deal with my physical symptoms and I was already settled on vagifem twice a week.
This worked for over a year, but I had spotting on the continuous progesterone so went over to FemSeven Conti patches, she suggested Evorel but I wanted to avoid noerthisterone just in case it caused problems and have been on this ever since.
I believe that HRT works on anxiety and hormonal depression but I think it takes longer to address these issues than the physical ones, but would argue the case for HRT over AD’s with any GP or Gynaecologist as it is something I feel strongly about. It takes a bit of patience for HRT to address mood issues but it is worth that patience.
xxxx
