I woke this morning for some reason the closest to being awake than I have felt for a very long time now. I wasn’t jumping and hopping across the room or anything silly like that, I just felt reasonably refreshed as you would expect to be after 11 hours sleep. I know that many reading this will find it rather odd for someone to be celebrating being awake, but it is such a rare occurrence that it is something special. Just sitting here in as much pain and discomfort as always but with a brain that feels clearer and more alert is really wonderful. I had my weekly phone call from my friend Jake and I found myself for once managing to speak for more than 4 words without falling over into a row of stuttering, yes, I lost my words and yes, I still sat here hoping he would keep talking as I didn’t have a clue what to say, but I was clearer and sharper than normal. One of the great things about talking with Jake is he has known me now for nearly 20 years and he has seen all the changes and been through all the hell of the times when I have lost the ability to talk almost completely, so other than Adam, he is the only person who understands me. He knows that silence doesn’t mean I’m not interested or I haven’t got anything to talk about or that I’d rather not be on the phone at all, he also understands and isn’t hurt when I do just have to say, I can’t talk any more, I need to go. He also can hear when I am tired and that my attention can’t be held any longer and he will end the call, letting me know he is doing so for me. Friends like that are few and far apart, in my case, he is my only friend that I have left.

I eventually managed to speak to my doctor at lunchtime yesterday, I have to say he was great, he went through with me the possible treatments and because of my loss of hair he thought and I agreed that HRT is my best bet. Adam, who is on holiday this week, seemed surprised when I said that was the treatment I was going to be taken, he felt that I needed to think about it, I felt I had nothing to think about at all. I have never been a person who is put off by all the hype around any drugs, I in fact don’t remember ever even reading the leaflets that come with them until I have been on them for a long time, then just usually because someone has asked me a question that I know the only place the answer is, is in those papers I ditch like junk mail. I might be very wrong about this but I have always believed that I should first trust my doctor and second, if you read all that rubbish, you are then primed to look for or even imagine problems. It has worked for me really well as to date I have never had a medicine that actually caused any side effects, well at least none bad enough for me to notice them. My GP had no problem putting me on to HRT as the biggest fears with them is that they can cause growths in the womb, well I don’t have one so there is no problem there. If they stop the sweats and my hair falling out then I will be happy. Loosing my body hair is of no issue to me at all, in fact I guess like most women, not having any is in fact preferable but loosing my eyebrows and the hair on my head, that is very much a different subject, I may not be a mirror huger but I do have some of the unbreakable vanities of being human. If you think about it logically it really is madness, these days people work so hard a being individual, at having a look that is theirs and theirs alone, nature hands us one for free and suddenly the fight is on to be like everyone else. I could buy myself a superb waist length purple wig to replace my waist length purple hair, yet I want my own and my own only. I could actually embrace this situation and take it as another chance to invent a look for myself, something that was almost removed by the fact I had to have a business appearance for my last job. Believe me in 1992 there were very few women who were heavily tattooed with purple hair extensions and heavily beaded hair, along with extremely visible body piercings, other than me, this could be my chance to work on an outrageous look to take me through the rest of my life, for now though I will try the HRT.

On the more conventional side I will be interested to see what the HRT will do for my health, as I wasn’t aware that I was going into the menopause, I wasn’t able to judge if there was any true effect on the rest of my health. Restoring the levels should be interesting as I will hopefully be able to know for once if some of the problems I have had recently, were actually down to the hormones vanishing or just my health. There have been loads of pains appearing in strange places recently, like the pain in my pelvic and around my breasts, both areas that are very much effected by hormone levels, I will of course be noting here what happens but truthfully, I am actually hoping that I will be writing nothing about it at all. I am hoping that I will just pop a pill daily and feel nothing other than less sweaty and little more hairy.