Waiting patiently by my phone for a call from my NHS GP I’m starting to write this post, and by the end, I hope to update you with where we are at present. Now officially exactly one year (almost to the day) on my HRT journey which I started a year after I was in menopause, and things are not going well.
Let me fill you in on how it’s gone so far.
So, 1st April 2023, I started on taking HRT (with a view to only taking it for 5 years as I am high risk for breast cancer). Initially, the GP put me on a weekly patch, as I was adamant I didn’t want something that I had to do every day – I wanted something that required the least possible intrusion into an already busy life and that I didn’t have to remember to take or do every single day.
Famous last words.
The patches I was on (FemSeven 50) just wouldn’t stay on for more than 24-36 hours. They just kept coming off and I found myself using band-aids (elastoplasts) to keep them stuck on, which wasn’t ideal, to say the least.
I then got myself an appointment with a private gynecologist specialist doctor. I already had the results of a full blood test requested by my GP, so no further blood tests were needed at that time, and she switched me over to the gel for oestrogen and the tablet for the progesterone components of HRT. We started with 2 pumps daily of the Oestrogel and 1 tablet a day of the Utrogestan.
It’s said that you need to allow at least three months on the medications to see if they are working for you or not, so in July we had more blood tests, and things seemed to be in the right direction in terms of my hormone levels, so the dosage at that review was kept the same.
Fast forward to the two most recent blood tests, the most recent being in February of this year, and the results are surprising, and not a little confusing to both me and the doctor.
Apart from so many other things not being well (thyroid being the main culprit), her words were – and I quote:
“Your ovarian function is very much in the range of menopause and the number are of those of somebody who is not using any HRT at all, which is not what I would have expected unless I had misremembered that you have stopped your HRT”
Which I have not.
For various reasons, which I won’t go into here as that’s not the point of this post, I have taken these recent blood test results to my GP in the hope that they can review them and help me get to the hormone levels that are right for me.
And that is where we are at the moment. Awaiting a telephone appointment (I’ve been trying to get a face-to-face appointment for over a month and it’s proving impossible) so a discussion over the phone will have to suffice. Once I’ve (hopefully) had that conversation, I’ll carry on with this post and update on what action or changes will need to be made.
OK, so we had the call – to be honest, I was fretting that it wasn’t going to happen as it was almost the end of the morning shift for the surgery, but call she did, and to her credit, we were on the call for over 20 minutes.
And the outcome is this:
I am changing from the gel/tablet combination to the twice-a-week patch: the Everel Conti Patch. The other option was to go up to four pumps daily of the gel, and as I already find the two-pumps-a-day cumbersome, I think four pumps would drive me over the edge. It’s a combined patch, so I don’t need anything else. We are concentrating on transdermal delivery systems to minimise the reduce of breast cancer.
Although we will be monitoring any changes in symptoms, in all honesty, I don’t really have any horrendous symptoms to speak of. I have been feeling a little more fatigued recently, but I’ve been putting that down to stepping it up considerably in the gym, but it could, of course be down to the hormones being effectively non-existent in my system.
However, as it takes up to three months for any noticeable changes, the doctor is keen to keep an eye on the hormone levels, so a blood test has been booked for a month’s time from now, to see if there is any movement on that score.
Everything else we discussed – liver enzyme function, kidney function, iron levels, cholesterol and of course, thyroid levels – will also be checked at that blood test in four weeks time.
And that’s where we are at present. I’ll be sure to keep you updated as things (hopefully) change so please do check back and of course, please share your experiences with HRT or if you’ve chosen not to go down that route, how you are keeping the symptoms at bay via the natural route. I’ll be reading and replying to all comments.
Thanks so much for reading and for any comments you’d like to leave below and please do share with anyone you think might be interested in this – I really appreciate it
Ambarina xx
