Six-ish? Weeks.

A note on my calendar says that I'm six weeks in to hormone replacement treatment.  In my case what that sort of really means is that I've been off of hormonal birth control for six weeks since I did about a month on this and that and then switched that up and now am on my, what, second week of just this? Oh but also we doubled it?

So really I'm on six weeks without the artificial hormone ride that the pill was giving me for decades and I'm just under two weeks on a trial run of a particular more natural hormone (progesterone) until we see what, if anything, my body is doing naturally on its own.

Which as I understand it means I'm in totally uncharted territory!  Maybe my body is still doing some of its own hormone production, which, I've learned, would be in cycles.  I think next month we would be doing some blood work to maybe get some levels and answers there?  But the interesting, and kind of frustrating thing about this is that no one really knows.  We're all (we women) SO different.  A body at the same age isn't going to be producing the same amount of hormones as another. And it's going to change!  THERE IS NO CONSISTENCY HERE!

At some point (again, as I understand it) I'll be bringing that other hormone (estrogen) back into play and if my body is still producing some, my body will eventually stop doing that... and so then that would be another additional change when it does?  But if it's already NOT doing that then we supplement but oh also I have a thyroid gland that stopped working when I was a kid and hey SPOILER!!!! that's a hormone too?  And I maybe had some other hormone stuff as a teen/twenty...ish that maybe means I need even more specific tweaking and like I'd cry if it wasn't so bizarrely like highly educated guessing by the trained medical folks.  

That first month was rough.  Really rough.  I have my suspicions about why, but the naturopath I'm working with pointed out that it could have been any of a handful of things going on... 1. the estrogen I started.  2. the progesterone I started 3. my own body's cycles still happening and 4. happening for the first time in many decades 5. my body adjusting to coming off of the hormones from the birth control pill  6. some combo of the above?  And there was me, walking in to that 1 month appointment absolutely certain it was the first.  

So we're seeing.  And it's hard to think that it might be quite a while before I have a sort of stabilized "normal" and then even that will change again as my body does whatever it's going to do as I continue to age.  What I had hoped would be a positive, simple answer and shift is the start of an ongoing journey that may mean me having to give up a lot of what I thought I knew about my body and how I feel.  And even talking to friends or people I know who are also on HRT isn't really all that useful.  Nor are all the positive stories I'd been reading online on social media.  That's THEIR body and mind, I'm in mine and we are *not* going to have a similar experience even though I had somehow assumed we'd all be at least similar but no.   

We humans are a strange bunch and these bodies we inhabit... wild, magical, confusing and only half knowable vessels.  Unavoidable.  Sometimes a lot.  

Here's to hoping for the best, and coming back to myself in all the ways possible.