Aunt Jen, Hope you come back here and see this reply to you! This might get a little long, but since every woman is different, I feel like you need to know MY circumstances. I always swore I would never take hormones! I was just going to tough it out. I am 47 and "think" I have been in perimenopause for almost 10 years. I was having super heavy bleeding and it had gotten to the point where I couldn't leave the house for a couple of days, and then it was 3 weeks on and one week off! ugh! My gyn had offered in the past for me to take birth control pills to help with the bleeding. Well I also had a tubal ligation 20 years ago and it just didn't settle right with me to take birth control pills. So I just kept "dealing" with it. Then last year it got bad enough that I was going to have a hysterectomy. I was all prepared, and my mother n law was diagnosed wtih Brain Cancer. My DH was the only caretaker living close by, so I knew I couldn't put him through caring for him dying mom and me trying to recuperate from a hysterectomy and still go to work everyday. So, my gyn and I decided I should try an endometrial ablation. It has been a miracle! I have not had one period in a year's time! woohoo! So I do still have my ovaries. Around Christmas last year, I started having strong heart palpitations in the middle of the night when I would get up to go potty. I couldn't believe that walking like 10 steps to and from the bathroom would cause such a thing, and I was convinced I was fixing to have a heart attack or something major! I went to a cardiologist, and convinced him to do a stres test on me, also a chemical one, and everything showed up fine. My blood pressure was up a little, so he put me on a beta blocker, but it's a low dosage. Then later in the spring, I started feeling sort of dizzy, light headed, like I might pass out...even had that feeling driving to church one morning...that really scared me! I just felt very strange and very wierd. And then at the same time, the hot flashes at night started...it felt like 20 times a night I was pushing the covers down, and then 5 minutes later pulling them back up because I was freezing. Not easy to sleep with all that going on!!! So, it got to the point, I was not getting much sleep, and then during the day, the wierd head feeling( i was convinced I had a brain tumor) was keeping me from functioning. I found myself waiting for my hubby to get home from work, and then asking him to drive me to Walmart or to the grocery store, etc...becaue I was too scared to go by myself, for fear of passing out somewhere. It was awful! Then, I had a breakthrough thanks to ThatHOmesite! There is a menopause message board on here, and I started reading threads there and OMG! There were threads about, wierd head feeling, palpitations, feeling like you are going to pass out...and most of these women were right around my age!!!! I couldn't believe it! So, I printed all those things out, and took them to my gyn at my annual checkup in June. I talked to her about it, and she knew I had never wanted to take hormones, and she was also concerned about be taking them so that they didn't start to build up the lining of my uterus that she had ablated. So she recommended I go to our compounding pharmacy and get a saliva testing kit...it was $170 out of my pocket, but I was so desperate, it was worth every penny! So I spit in a tube, and mailed it off to Oregon. A couple of weeks later, the results came back in and my hormones were WAY out of whack AND my adrenals were exhausted. So to answer your question...=), I am on a progeserone/estrogen cream that I use twice daily right now. This cream is made just for me according to my results. There is also a long questionnaire that you fill out about all your symptoms. I am also on DHEA and adrenal forte, to get my adrenals working the way they should again. I started all this about 6 weeks ago, and the difference it has made in my life has been life changing! I would say I am at least 50% better already, maybe even 75% and I feel so much stronger during the day, I have actually been able to start exercising. Couldn't even do that before! The hot flashes at night have all but gone away...there might be a couple sometime, but they are very mild and I seem to fall back asleep easier than I was. I still wake up during the night now, for what reason I don't know. I am going to try cutting out all caffeine, even though I don't consume much of it anyway. But it came down to quality vs. quantity of life for me, and I wound up choosing quality. I have seen my 91 year old mother, be miserable, with not much quality of life, and I just decided I would rather enjoy my life now, instead of just trying to go for quantity of years and be miserable later. I am still trying to take care of myself, in fact, I feel like doing that now where as before the hormones, I really didn't care! So I hope this somewhat helps you. Sorry it took so long to explain, just wanted you to know my own situation. You have to decide what's best for you!

"I’ve had a lot of experience with my DH going into the hospital through the ER, both by ambulance and walking in. I’ve never seen the ER stacked up the way it was tonight. People were out in the hallway waiting to get in. Inside there were people on beds in the hallways. I feel so bad for the health care providers. I can’t imagine working like this for well over a year." Like NHBaskets I was in an ER this week and had the exact same experience/reaction. My father broke his hip Tuesday, evidently trying to get up and probably relieve himself at the ALF where he is in memory care. He was taken to the closest emergency room at an excellent hospital nearby. I've been there many times with my MIL who also has dementia and also is in memory care-at the same ALF(!) and who used to fall regularly. Because of his mental state I was allowed to go in. The entrances were closed, instead the only way in was through a giant tent set up with airlocks and which had a huge temporary waiting room inside, filled with what must have been a couple of hundred people sitting waiting for treatment-all with masks, some lying down, mostly young to middle aged. My dad stayed on a gurney in the hallway; there were no cubicles open. I sat with him in the hall for almost 8 hours, which happened to be near the ambulance bay. No exaggeration, literally every 2-3 minutes along came a pair of EMTs wheeling patients into the ER. People unconscious, people gasping for breath, people with those bag valve breathing masks, mostly young with a few middle agers and only a couple of elderly folks. It was like being in the modern version of those woodcuts of plague wards. My dad was there 24 hours before we could get him moved to an inpatient hospice care facility. The doctor told me 70 people were waiting for a bed so my father never got out of that hallway, with morphine IV going and COVID victims streaming by.

A few anecdotal stories about someone who was vaccinated and still contracted Covid (even died from it) do not contradict huge amounts of data from all over the world showing that this is RARE. The data shows that vaccinated people can contract Covid, but that most have few to no symptoms, and that even fewer vaccinated individuals requiring hospitalization die of Covid. (A prime reason for masking is because vaccinated people DO get the virus without knowing it -- because they have no symptoms. These people become unwitting spreaders of the virus. Everyone needs to mask.) BTW, people do not get 'double vaccinated'. Most vaccines are administered in two doses over a one month time frame. The vaccines DO protect people from serious illness and death from Covid. It isn't surprising that boosters will be needed to continue the protection. Vaccines can't be overly strong if they are to be safe for the general public. This virus is being fought even as it develops. Anti-vaxxers are providing Covid plenty of host bodies, allowing it to mutate --refining and improving its ability to infect and kill.

Nini and Maria, I was diagnosed just twelve years ago. My first episode was 225 BPM, I couldnt do anything except sit and have a heartbeat. All subsequent attacks have been the same or worse. I can always tell right before one starts because it feels like i am falling off a cliff. I called a friend who took me to the ER where I got adenosine to restart the heart. I was on a regimen of arrhymia drugs that have been tweaked and changed over the years. At first I had breakthrough epsodes that were very scary if i was driving so I stayed off the interstate for awhile 🙄 My situation is complicated by the fact that i also have a clotting disorder and have been in DIC twice during or after a surgery. Traveling requires a lot of preparation, carrying health history and knowing location of closest suitable hospital. I don't have them often now and they don't always require a trip to the hospital. Travel to even somewhat remote locations is no longer on my radar; I’m glad I saw a lot of the third world as a teenager.