It's All About the Drugs

I listened to my chiro. Then a week later I still felt terrible and went back to see my doctor. I had a lot of questions about why I was prescribed Premarin when I didn't have the three main symptoms: hot flashes, night sweats, vaginal dryness. I had fatigue, mental fuzziness, depression.

I had done a lot of reading in a book called "The Wisdom of Menopause," by Christiane Northrup. I was convinced that I needed to try some other kinds of therapies.

My doctor, bless his heart, listened to it all and then figured out a way to tell me to stop researching and just trust him. It had not been long enough. I was spinning my wheels with research. Overthinking. Over analyzing. Adding to my own stress. Do a little reading, but not so much.

And he suggested I go to see my gynecologist for more conversation. His office called and made the appointment for me, enabling me to get in there more quickly. He was careful to say that he'd be delighted to walk me through this process. He would do all he could to ensure that I had the latest and greatest treatment. But I realize now that he wanted me to just calm down, get my questions answered, and figure out how I was going to approach this...either by trusting him, my gynecologist, or going it on my own.

He was careful to warn me about holistic/herbal treatments. He has no real philosophical problems with them per se, but he didn't want me to go that route because of my slightly elevated risk for heart disease. (I have an unexplained elevated C-reactive protein count...eleveated levels of inflammation. This means that there is some inflamation happening somewhere in my body and, despite being extremely healthy, higher levels of inflammation have been shown to be a common factor in heart attack cases)

And so I went to see my gynecologist. She listened very carefully. Answered my questions. Confirmed again that I really needed to give the Premarin some more weeks to work. She said if it didn't help with the fatigue, we could consider adding some testosterone to the mix.

I told her that, even if the Premarin did work, I'd like to eventually switch to an estrogen that was not derived from horses. She immediately understood. "Why not just go ahead and switch now?" she asked. "It can't hurt."

And so she prescribed Estratest D.S. This was the highest dose. The testosterone might give me a little more get-up-and-go.

And it did. I noticed a difference in just a couple of weeks. The fatigue lifted and so did the depression. For the next few months, I had cyclical episodes of fatigue, and confusion, but each only lasted a day or less. I was coming back to life!