Reading all your messages has been like hearing the latest updates on my three sisters. That's a compliment and sincere thank you. Crohn's disease, Graves disease, fibromyalgia and arthritis (Rheumatoid/Osteo)have reared their ugly heads among my 3 sisters but left me inexplicably unscathed. The family is an autoimmune minefield...LOL. After the ONE night I went home to get some sleep I came back to my father's house to find 2 cars and no father. When your 82 year old father is MIA without explanation you naturally worry. Turns out he had a second serious bout of Atrial Fibrillation and went to the hospital without telling me. Ask me if I wasn't feeling guilty for leaving him and upset with him for not calling me. He didn't want to interfere with me taking my best friend to a colonoscopy appointment Monday AM. I didn't sleep again Monday or Tuesday nights but got a couple hours sleep earlier tonight when I landed back at my father's with Pop in tow from hospital/cardiology office. No Coumadin yet until results of 3 week montoring device show if he's having small episodes of A-Fib when he gets chest tightness on treadmill at gym. Coumadin and exercised induced symptoms are the worst for him. He's extrememly active physically (so he doesn't fall asleep!) although we're having memory issues. Well, I've whined again but it feels better to get it out. I went outside yesterday at first light to rake and do a little garden clean up. It was glorious and relaxing. If all stays well for next week or so I'll have cooked my 5th Thanksgiving dinner and actually gotten somewhat used to it. Part of family will be here and Dad can have his turkey dinner without dietary restrictions of blood thinner. He's all about his food but luckily for me not picky...LOL. All in all, I'm a pretty lucky chickadee tonight. :) Good wishes for all of your health challenges as well. I think I'm going to get some Lavender heat wraps to relax me when I'm exhausted but can't sleep.

That's a sago palm in the background. Planted by a prior homeowner. It's extremely slow growing which is fine with me as I don't particularly care for palms. I have attached a pic of my Caramel Heuchera. I have picked up some more lumber to make a planter for the Caramel. The Heucheras do much better for me in planters than in the ground.

I have tried virtually every OTC sleeping aid available. Tylenol PM the best in my opinion. The prescription medication that I have recently tried is: Ambien, Lunesta, Rozerem, Restoril and Clonopin. My Dr. gave me free samples of Ambien CR, Lunesta and Rozerem. They were all pretty much the same; however my insurane company would not cover the Lunesta or Rozerem as they are fairly new drugs. My Dr. would have to fill out quite a lengthly questionaire regarding why he was prescribing any of these three drugs for me. Huh??? Duh, she can't sleep. So I told him to forget it any just give me another month of Restoril. Some nights it works real well, other nights, such as last night, well I saw the sun come up. Even after taking two or three. Every hour and a half, I will take another one if I am still awake. I am getting to the drastic point phase. Electro shock therapy; lobotomy; a 2x4 to the head. Life's a b!tch when you're awake and nobody else is. Approximately 10 years ago I tried Trazadone and Elavil (two anti-depressants) taken at bedtime for their sedating effect. As far as I can recall, they worked pretty well, however their one side effect that I can't handle at this point is: weight gain. I have already gained at least 20 lbs. in the last few months. Thank you Ambien for the frequent trips to the refrigerator in the middle of the night and at least 10 of the 20 lbs. As I mentioned earlier, I did not sleep until 6:30 this a.m., so I probably rambling and not very lucid. I do apologize for this.

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!