Starting HRT: the next phase of my life

I have been struggling with anxiety, feeling boiling most of the time, hot sweats, joint pains and irregular periods for a while now, but I put off doing anything about it. I did ask for my bloods to be tested last year, but when they got the results they just said they were ‘normal’, whatever that means.

Now I’m a nurse who has even done HRT checks on women so I know I should have probably taken it further then, but I just accepted it. I continued to struggle with my mood, I had so much anxiety and it felt like I had a constant lump in my throat – so much so I convinced myself I had lymphoma. I was reassured this wasn’t the case. I had trouble sleeping too. I’m always tired, and I usually have no trouble getting to sleep, but I wake up in the night and can’t get back to sleep.

The anxiety and down days were affecting my life so much that it reached a head and I made an appointment to discuss it. It was really simple in the end, the advanced nurse practitioner said that due to my age (I’m 47) I didn’t need to have bloods done and made me an appointment for the following week to commence HRT. If I’d known it was that easy, I’d have done it ages ago.

The review itself was straightforward, she discussed my options. I have the mirena coil in, so I already have the progesterone component, meaning I only need the oestrogen. My options were a patch twice a week or a daily gel. I initially wasn’t sure about a patch, but I went for it in the end because I didn’t fancy applying a messy gel every day and possibly forgetting a dose. I had my blood pressure taken and we went through the pros and cons. The only con was a possibility of slight increased risk of breast cancer, but that isn’t entirely proven.

That was it, I had the prescription straight away and picked it up and it was on by the end of the day. It’s a small clear patch that’s unobtrusive, and you can put it anywhere on your body and get it wet no problem.