This is a firsthand account submitted through SWHR’s Share Your Story portal, as part of SWHR’s Women’s Health Perspective series.
Let’s begin with my menopause symptoms: night heat with my temperature rising but no sweating, bone density problems, very high cholesterol, weight gain, and heart palpitations. Sometimes, I could not even breathe white sitting on the couch. I was 65. So, I got a new primary care doctor, a gynecologist, and cardiologist, and tried women’s hormones.
After a few years, I finally have the whole combination of different supportive medications, hormones, and supplements in an ideal place and feel fine. All is working well, I feel great, and I am balancing minimum dosages on each of these supportive tools. I also have thyroid issues but that, too, is going well. What a difference a day makes!
The hard part now is that there is no central place to connect to get all the parts together when it comes to menopause care. It took me four years to put all the pieces together for my own health—and I have been a laboratory director and medical technologist for 40 years. It would be great to have a central care hub for menopausal women to address all the symptoms so that they can find relief quickly.