Just another day without estrogen...

That f..ing endocrinologist still hasn't called with my test results, and I can't believe she wouldn't have them, I mean her office is attached to the hospital for pete's sake.

And until I talk to her, I can't take any of the drugs or vitamins I normally do, like estrogen or progesterone, or my Claritin. Because she may need to redo some tests and different drugs can interfere with thyroid tests.

Which means that right now, I'm a snotty, saggy ol' withered crone with bones like swiss cheese, no energy to accomplish crap and a raging estrogen deprived brain.

Picture Froglady.

Okay, not really, but it FEELS that way! I even got my hair colored yesterday and spent 2 hours being worshipped by my fabulous Yorkville hairdresser, and I still don't feel pretty.

And weirdly I've now run into several other women who are menopausal and hotflashy, (they are in regular menopause, I'm in premature so it's a bit different). And none of them are on Estrogen, and they looked awful. One is not speaking to her DH, and maybe on the verge of divorce, and the one of the others is my 6yo's teacher.

And lordy this teacher is not the same woman. If she keeps it up I can see her getting fired for sure. This is the thing about the Women's Health Initiative. The study was lousy, terribly done, and yet every doctor on earth is hanging their hat on it.

Dr. Jennifer Blake gave a lecture at U of T about it. I was so amazed afterwards that I went to the site. For example, the group of women who were studied were almost all over the age of 60. Yes, they studied a large group of women, but less than 800 were between the ages of 50 and 60. That's not enough for any decent epidemiological study, anywhere. So any recommendations for women under the age of 60 are irrelevant, and since no women under the age of 50 were studied, it's malpractice to even use it as a basis for a recommendation, IMHO.

Plus, the original study was supposed to look at heart disease, so all the participants were recruited to look for heart disease. They either had a family history of heart disease, smoked or had smoked in the past, or had high cholesterol, obesity, etc. This means that the group was not representative of the population in general, and the findings cannot be applied to the whole group. Yes, many people have these risk factors, etc. etc. , but not the majority of the population don't. And jamming your study full of these people makes it damn hard to control for these factors when the math starts.

A good example is the clotting & DVT part of the study. All the people with blood clots on HRT were tested for genetic clotting factors. Big surprise, lots had them. Which means that people with a very rare genetic blood clotting factors shouldn't take estrogen. Not ALL WOMEN. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the women who had rare genetic clotting factors and didn't take estrogen, eventually got blood clots anyway. But we'll never know, because they ended the study early, never tested the rest for narrowing of the arteries, or fibrin factors and only tested a small group of people (167 - bc, 570 - control group) for blood clot factors. They certainly didn't test everyone for them. And maybe they should've...

Yes, the WHI said in very small print that other factors are bad too. But the media didn't report that.

And now I know 45 year old women who are listening to their overworked family docs and not taking estrogen because it is evil.

And they're getting fired, and their marriages are breaking up, and frankly I'm not sure the WHI is improving the quality of their life very much.

I'm going to go youtube for awhile. Maybe I'll be less cranky. I hope. But I think I really need a bath in a large tub of Estrogen.