u/rosemary_charles

48F 200mgP oral, Compound T, currently working out new E.

Had an issue with absorbing my E gel after years doing great. Completely bottomed out. I have been on the 2x a week patch for one week now. My moods are crazy!!

I am literally watching myself go from zero to rage in 60 seconds. If I see anything sweet or cute, I wanna cry. Instagram videos of odd animal friends. Seeing older folks shuffle hand in hand in the grocery. Straight back to rage. I am hitting the extremes of every emotion. Being aware of it helps keep me from unleashing anything on innocent bystanders. But when am I gonna level back up?

I was experiencing a decline over the course of a few months. Then the bottom fell out for about a week. And then I got the patch. I’m at .075. I’m just getting dizzy from the ups and downs and arounds. Plus…I don’t even know if I’m properly absorbing the patch 🤷🏻‍♀️

I've been in post for 10 months. The first few months I didn't notice anything different, although I did start getting even better sleep. But after the beginning of the year I had symptoms return that pointed toward estrogen. I started having insomnia, increased anxiety, super sense of smell. My gyn thought that perhaps I wasn't absorbing my gel efficiently and has changed me to the patch. Because of the shortage she prescribed me the .1% but told me to cut it in half. I did all my research on here on how to cut it and such and started a couple of days ago.

Last night I had the worst night sweat sleep!! So bad that I wanted to get up and slap the other half of the .1 patch right on. I know that it is going to take time but my questions are:

When did you feel comfortable enough to experiment with dosages?
Should things be leveling out in post meno?
What would you do?

It is really hard to be patient when I thought I had moved past the hardest part of all of this and when it comes to sleep. I need sleep!

I've been post since August of last year. October through the end of the year I had the best sleep of my life. I was feeling great!! My HRT had been treating me well for a long time. Then at the beginning of the year, I started noticing some things coming back, hot flashes, insomnia, heightened anxiety. I thought it was post holiday. But it never settled. It was also around the same time I went on .06 micro dose every 10 days of tirzepatide for arthritis inflammation that couldn't be treated with steroids.

Went to my gyno for help and started weekly labs just to see if that showed anything, (for what that's worth, ik ik). Had to keep a symptoms log and all pointed toward estrogen deficit. We were all prepared to increase my Estrogel. But my numbers kept coming back higher and higher to the point where my doc was going to need to up my progesterone to 400mg if it didn't stop just for protection.

So a lower dose of estrogel for a couple of week. Ruled out ovarian issues, etc that would cause such a vast increase. Numbers bottomed out. Did find that I had way too much Vitamin D in my system. Switched to the patch. Now I'm on .05 E patch, 200mg P and a compounded T (same tirzepatide dosing).

The past two nights have been awful. Hot sweats that made me remember I had forgotten what hot sweats really were! Up for hours with a hot body and a surrounding chill from the wet neck, chest, and clothes.

Am I wrong that this should be easier in post? The majority of my hormones should be coming from HRT, correct? So, it would just make sense that things would level. How long would you wait before you started experimenting with your patch levels? I feel like I get into a good groove and then my hormones throw a wrench in the plans. And I thought those days were behind me. Sigh.

EDIT: My doc does not diagnose on numbers, however she does do bloodwork every six weeks just for reference. Since I started HRT my E numbers have stayed in the 50's (3 years) until recently when it went into the 400's. So, something wonky happened. But doc is treating me based on symptoms...just not as quickly as I would like. LOL