Improved
6112 HealthChanged
3786 LivesSaved
3568 Lives0 lives impacted in the last 24 hrs Learn More
“I started taking estrogen because I thought I was going crazy. Then the studies on hormone replacement really made me nuts. What’s a woman to do?”
If you are in perimenopause or menopause, you know this feeling. Do you or don’t you seek hormone replacement therapy? If so, do you go with synthetic or bio-identical hormones? And do you stay on it for a long time or just use it as a short-term battle plan against hot flashes and other symptoms? Plain and simple, if you have ever asked yourselves any of these questions, you must read Cynthia Gorney’s weekend article in the New York Times magazine.
Gorney tells her own story, first of the puzzling dark “Pit” she would fall into periodically, then of the experience of how her estrogen patches helped pull her out of that pit and gave her her mind back. But she also explores, deeply and relevantly, the science behind estrogen therapy, the conflicting scientific and emotional views of it, her rollercoaster search for answers, and – in laywoman’s terms – the tsunami of hormone replacement research, the 2002 Women’s Health Initiative study that produced so many warnings and so many worries about HRT.
Gorney writes:
“The patches my gynecologist prescribed worked, by the way. I didn’t understand how, beyond the evident quieting of some vicious recurring hormonal hiccup, and neither did the gynecologist. But she had other women who came in sounding like me and then felt better on estrogen, and I would guess many of them, too, decided after the W.H.I. news that they could surely find other ways to manage their “mood swings,” to use the wondrously bland phrasing of the medical texts. (I’m sorry, but only someone who has never experienced one could describe a day of “I would stab everyone I know with a fork if only I could stop weeping long enough to get out of this car” as a “mood swing.”) We muddled along patchless, my mood swings and my patient family and I, until there came a time in 2006 when in the midst of some work stress, intense but not unfamiliar, I found myself in a particularly bad Pit episode and this time unable to pull out.
“It was profoundly scary. In retrospect, I managed a surprising level of public discretion about what was going on; competence at the cover act is a skill commonly acquired by midlife women, I think, especially those with children and work lives. If the years have taught us nothing else, they have taught us how to do a half dozen things at once, at least a couple of them decently well. Like other women I have met recently with stories like this one, I relied for a few months on locked office doors, emergency midday face-washings and frequent visits to an increasingly concerned talk therapist. But one afternoon I got off my bicycle in the middle of a ride with my husband, because I had been crying so hard that I couldn’t see the lane lines, and I sat down on the sidewalk and told him how much I had come to hate knowing that family obligations meant I wasn’t allowed to end my life. The urgent-care people at my health clinic arranged a psychiatric consult fast, and after listening and nodding and grabbing scratch paper to draw me an explanatory graph with overlapping lines that peaked and plunged, the psychiatrist wrote me two prescriptions. One was for an antidepressant.
“The other — I recognized the name as soon as she wrote it down — was for Climara, my old estrogen patch.”
At the five-year mark on the patch, Gorney started thinking about the “low dose, stop soon” advice given to women regarding hormones. So she did what reporters do best: She went in search of information. Real information , that would be of real help.
Which is why we find her in a brain scientist’s laboratory in the beginning of the story. And why she wrangles her way into a scientific symposium on the timing of hormone therapy, a symposium meant for only research scientists and physicans. And why she explores an National Institutes of Health cognitive trial in Northern California. And interviews gynecologists and geriatricians. And a Harvard medical professor, and a USC scientist, and the author of “Hot Flashes, Hormones and Your Health.” And does a lot of other things that you and I might do if we were suddenly turned loose to find our own personal answers.
That’s enough from me. If you have more time, go read the story. Bookmark it. Print it out. Take it to your doctor’s office. It’s a fine, fine piece for any woman trying to solve her own puzzle.
From the New York Times Magazine:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/18/magazine/18estrogen-t.html?pagewanted=1
Add a Comment6 Comments
Dear Cynthia:
I just read your 2010 article The Estrogen Dilemma. Thank God for you I do. I just started the bio identical hormone patch two weeks ago. I'm a 13 year breast cancer survivor, a famous one here in Vegas. I ran with the patch! Risks and all.
I was getting so sick a year ago. My husband and I thought I either had breast cancer again (I lost both of them in a double mastectomy on January 17, 2001) or developing a mental illness. We were both scared.
Finally this March 2014 I ended up I the hospital with the doctors thinking I had a TIA mini stroke. It was not. It was a horrible hormone imbalance. It has been hell. But I am happy that I ended up in emergency babbling gibberish like a stroke victim. All the MRIs, CT scan, ultrasound on my chest and EEG to my brain and every other test they could think of for stroke and cancer came back clean. Thank God!
I ran to my own primary care doctor a week later and ordered her to test me for my hormones. I passed with flying colors. My FSH was high and my estrogen was low. I had been body-snatched by the menomonster. It was horror moan time for me. It was hell. Until I ran to my OBGYN the same one who had done my hysterectomy (but left my ovaries) just a month before my chest was whacked off. I had lost track with him due to insurance change and now once again found myself in his office because my insurance included him. He was thrilled to see me. Even letting me cry on him in his arms to release the monster within. I was not crazy or cancer cell consumed. I cried and laughed through my tears of relief.
And yes I begged for the Bio patch. After all he left my ovaries in for 13 some years and they were making more estrogen than the highest patch dose offered. I got the mid-grade 89 octane dose after one week of being on the 87 regular which wasn't enough.
I'm only two weeks on the patch but OMG do I feel like me again until the end of the 3rd day before I change the patch out. The roller coaster ride is a bitch I just can't say it nice but I'm not scared of breast cancer being on it.
We discussed the risk of BC and will worry about if it ever arrives again. I doubt it. I eat healthy. He put me on for only 2 years. You can study me if you like. I also take Schizandra (I've been on it for 13 years for chemo fatigue which it removed and I never went off it then found out last week in Asia that this adaptogen is giving to menopause women all over Asia), Ashawagandha, Maca Root and a few others. They help tremendously alongside the Bios.
Please feel free to contact me. My full story is at www(dot)AREALLIVEPINKBAT(dot)COM it's about my breast cancer and baseball career with the men. You'll love it.
YOU ROCK WOMAN FOR WRITING THAT ESTROGEN ARTICLE. THAT IS ME TOO!
I HATE THE MENOMONSTER AND I WANT IT TO MOVE OUT NOW!
I'm also in culinary school and my mantra right now is NOT THROWING KNIVES and maybe I should write a book that title about this menomonster journey. I have a blog www(dot)AuntWeeniesKitchenKoup(dot)WordPress(dot)com I am working on my professional certification so I can help other cancer survivors to make healthy food choices. We don't learn about good nutrition after cancer. I've lost five dragon boat racing breast cancer teammates to BC again three whom ate horrible junk.
Big hugs from Norine V. aka A Real Live Pink Bat
April 15, 2014 - 3:25pmThis Comment
The word 'natural' is an interesting word when it comes to drugs. Heroine is natural, by the way. Natural is the buzzword that gets the sale. All natural products also have side-effects although they are milder and fewer than other drugs.
Glenda de Vries
April 30, 2010 - 4:49amThis Comment
This a good read and great site! I agree with "Staringat40" - definitely not a lecture. I think that there's a lot of misinformation and half-truths surrounding the risks and benefits of hormone therapy, be it bioidentical or not. A friend of mine at work mentioned that she started using bioidentical hormones and claimed that they were safer because they were natural. I read that they're compounded in pharmacies - how does this make it "natural"?
Does anyone know anything about this?
April 29, 2010 - 8:44pmThis Comment
Hi,
Yes, I agree with Holly a.k.a startingat40. We're lectured enough in life, we certainly don't need a lecture at menopause.
All of our womanly functions are unique-from the choices we make whether or not to use painkillers during labor and delivery to whether or not to use hormone replacement therapy at midlife. All of our risks, benefits and tolerances are different and no one should feel bad or guilty because their menopause is harder or easier than someone elses.
Glenda
April 21, 2010 - 11:05amwww.nursingmenopause.com
This Comment
This was a great article. It contained alot of information without feeling like a lecture on what you should and shouldn't be doing.
April 21, 2010 - 10:44amHolly
http://www.menopausechitchat.com/
This Comment
Hi,
I just love this article because it describes the unique struggles that women can have with menopause. There's no one shoe fits all for menopausal experience or choice of treatment.
While some women will require hormone therapy, or other medical intervention such as antidepressants etc, other women can do very well just with lifestyle changes, fitness and diet to ease their symptoms.
Glenda de Vries
April 20, 2010 - 1:03pmwww.nursingmenopause.com
This Comment