HRT disaster in UK leaving many ladies struggling with low temper, nervousness and insomnia

It is 2am and I’m lying awake in bed, cursing everyone. Politicians, people on the Tube, work colleagues, friends, my husband, influencers – even crisp-makers who no longer make my favourite flavour, they all come under my wrath.

Anger and rage has become a go-to, a surprise to the woman who has spent a lifetime pacifying and calming others.

It’s a symptom of menopause they never mention, probably because women (especially older women) are supposed to be demure and genteel. Before I began this rollercoaster of hormonal changes, I knew only that I could get hot flushes and my periods would stop.

I have had both, although my periods haven’t stopped as such. Instead, the monthly ritual has become a game of peek-a-boo, with me never quite sure if “Aunty Flo” is going to appear or not. I waste a lot of money wearing sanitary towels “just in case”.

But they were among the last of the symptoms to appear and signposted that my body was going through menopause.

For almost four years before that, I have suffered hair loss that left me with a bald spot, itchy skin that seems to boil when I scratch it, aches and pains in my joins that wake me up at night in pain and heart palpitations so strong that I ended up in A&E one night convinced I was having a heart attack.

The physical symptoms, however, pale in comparison to the deep, dark depression and anxiety that leaves me wanting to jump in the Thames.

Add to that a horrendous paranoia that makes me convinced nobody likes me – and that I’m about to lose my job. I shake going into work, believing this will be my last day and I’ll leave with a P45.

And, of course, there is the anger and rage that sees me transform from UN Peace Corps to the Incredible Hulk in milliseconds. Menopause rage is a red mist that descends even as part of you is watching on in horror, amazed at what your mouth is saying and your body is doing. It leaves you feeling you have lost all control of your life.

But my symptoms don’t only affect me. They affect all those around me. My husband is left helpless as I sit in a corner, crying, unable to think or listen to sense. Even a day out is ruined as my period starts unexpectedly and I have to return home, his coat wrapped around my waist to hide the stain.

Now, thanks to finding the correct mix of HRT, a search that has taken almost another four years, life is back to normal. Better than normal, in fact, as the HRT has eradicated the monthly PMS I suffered and I feel almost like the 11-year-old me again, before puberty hit.

This is why me and hundreds of thousands of women like me are scared and worried about the ongoing shortages of HRT. Because menopause is much more than hot flushes.

Elizabeth Carr-Ellis is the co-founder of Pausitivity menopause campaign