Starting HRT at 62?
Have any of you experienced these symptoms: sleepiness, low energy, moods that don’t match the moment, and severe alternating joint pain?
I perimenopaused during the anti-HRT era, and being misdiagnosed as not being perimenopausal. My doctor told me my hormones were normal. Turns out, hormones were not normal for me and I went through years of thinking I was going crazy. I’m worn out by medical gaslighting. (My brain tumor was also misdiagnosed and I barely lived through 10 years of unnecessary suffering.)
I soldiered through, my white hot weird feelings of rage subsided, my unquenchable thirst subsided (I was drinking 1.5+ liters of water during the night), the shriveling up like a raison feeling subsided (now I feel like a slightly reconstituted raisin), as well as other more minor symptoms leveled out. The body is amazing.
However, the brain fog, low energy and feeling sleepy, low moods that don’t match current conditions, and random joint pain have not subsided. Intense joint pain that is increasingly becoming an issue. I thought I had arthritis or some such. The knee pain (I’m very active and played sports through my life without any knee injuries) is at times crippling, but unpredictable. A series of days will pass and I can barely walk 5 minutes before getting a sharp pain in one of my knees. A few days will go by and that knee will be ok, but the other knee kicks in. A few days more will pass and suddenly I can walk 5 miles/8 km and have no knee pain. Sometimes months of alternating knee pain, then it will disappear for months. I keep track of all my activity, diet, lifestlye, and there seems to be no correlation.
The knee pain has mostly disappeared, however shoulder joint pain started growing, first in one shoulder, now in both. It is fairly consistently there, ebbing and flowing, waking me up at night. I’m an avid cyclist and on my last 4.5 week bike tour, the pain was becoming unbearable. I’ve done a few day rides and the shoulder pain crept in. Yesterday, I did a longer day ride than I’ve done in a while, no shoulder pain while riding, but during the day and night, shoulder pain jolting me, or waking me up.
And then there’s the menopause weight gain, the weight has crept on despite my healthy lifestyle.
I’ve read that women in their 60’s can benefit from HRT, and I’d really like to give it a go to see if it will address these lingering and increasingly worse symptoms.