My DM had a terrible time Jane, sweats, mood swings, the works. It coincided with my hitting adolescence and I’m amazed my DF stayed with us! I think it was about then he started making himself a flask and decamping to the garage for the day! Mum’s personality changed too for the worst, and she had the most awful migraines for the rest of her life. She wasn’t my mum any more. Eventually, in her 80s, a bad prolapse meant she had to have a hysterectomy. Her womb had a cancerous growth and the surgeon did her best but didn’t get all of it and she died from endometrial cancer. My father, who first clamped a pipe between his teeth in his teens, died from lung cancer. The fact that both my parents and possibly a couple of grandparents died from cancer does concern me, so I take every test I can.
When in my mid 40s, bad fibroids gave me the excuse for a full hysterectomy, I took it and have been on a very low dose of oestrogen only HRT ever since. I have tried to come off HRT two or three times when GPs have muttered about breast cancer, but, as someone said, the menopause starts to strike. Badly. Sweats, freezing cold, mood swings, migraines, bad memory lapses, anxiety attacks, that dryness of which a lady should not speak, exhaustion.... the works. I came off all medication four weeks before my knee op on the advise of the surgeon and started back on two weeks ago. It’s now starting to have an effect and I’m beginning to feel human again and I’ve not had even a headache this week. Although I did boil the dumplings dry yesterday and last weekend completely forgot the rhubarb burning gently on the stove! (The saucepan needed replacing anyway.). I think that’s the scariest part. My memory goes. If HRT can keep dementia at bay for a while longer, I’m sticking with it.