This post shares my personal experience. I’m not a doctor, and nothing here is medical advice. Please talk to your own provider about what’s right for you.
Five years ago, my body started doing things I didn’t recognize. This is my personal story of how I finally got access to HRT in perimenopause.
The weight came on out of nowhere, and no matter what I did, I couldn’t take it off the way I always had before. My sleep fell apart, down to maybe a couple of hours a night. And out of nowhere, this low hum of anxiety showed up and wouldn’t leave. I knew something was changing. I just didn’t have a name for it yet.
So I did what you’re supposed to do. I went to my doctor for my regular physical and laid it all out.
Dead end number one: “It’s normal, just deal with it”
The first thing she told me was that this was normal for my age. I was heading into perimenopause, and I’d just have to deal with it. That was more or less the plan: deal with it.
The other thing she offered? She thought I was depressed, and she wanted to put me on antidepressants.
Now, I want to be fair here. Antidepressants are the right call for plenty of women, and I’d never knock anyone who needs them. But I wasn’t asking for that. I was asking why my body suddenly felt like a stranger’s, and the answer I got was a prescription pad for something I hadn’t come in for. It didn’t sit right.
Dead end number two: the $3,000 detour
Next I found a functional medicine physician, and honestly, parts of this were great. He ran a full panel of bloodwork, really thorough, the kind of all-encompassing testing I’d been wanting. I finally felt like someone was actually looking.
He was even open to prescribing HRT. But before he would, he wanted me to go on a $3,000 meal plan first.
Three thousand dollars. Before the thing I actually came for.
I tried. It wasn’t successful, and I was no closer to feeling like myself.
After years of trying everything
Here’s where I’d landed after all of that: roughly three hours of sleep a night, for years. Twenty pounds up. Brain fog thick enough that I’d lose my train of thought mid-sentence. Night sweats and hot flashes that kept getting worse.
And I had tried everything. Every supplement you can name, melatonin, magnesium, CBD. The whole cabinet. None of it touched what was actually going on.
If you’re in this somewhere right now, you already know how worn down it makes you. It’s not just the symptoms. It’s the feeling that you keep raising your hand and nobody’s calling on you.
What I finally did
I called Midi Health and set up an appointment.
I want to be clear: I’m not affiliated with Midi in any way, shape, or form. No partnership, no kickback. I’m just telling you what I did.
I had a 30-minute consultation with a gynecologist. I told her the whole story, the same one I just told you. And at the end of it, we actually made a plan. She prescribed an estrogen patch (estradiol) along with progesterone, and walked me through how it should help with my symptoms.
After five years, it was the first appointment where I felt heard instead of managed.
Where I am now
I’m right at the starting line. The next step is simple: start the HRT and check back in a month.
I don’t have a before-and-after for you yet. I can’t tell you it fixed everything, because I just began. What I can tell you is that I finally feel like I’m pointed in a direction instead of stuck in place, and after the last five years, that’s not nothing.
I’ll come back and write an honest update once I’ve got real time on it, the good and the bad.
If you’ve been brushed off, told to just deal with it, or sent down a $3,000 detour, I see you. You’re not imagining it, and you’re not asking for too much. Keep advocating for yourself until someone listens.
Have you tried to get HRT in perimenopause? Where are you in the process? Tell me in the comments. I read every one.
All the best,
Antoinette 🤍