HRT: Is It a Pill, a Spray, or a Full-Time Job? (A Perimenopause Survival Story)

Yesterday morning I stood in my bathroom holding a progesterone pill, staring at my reflection like we were about to negotiate a peace treaty.

“Have we taken you?” I asked it.

The pill, emotionally unavailable, offered nothing (typical!).

So I did what any intelligent, capable woman navigating perimenopause would do - I checked the bin, because obviously the most reliable medical tracking system is: "Is there foil in the rubbish?"

This, apparently, is what Hormone Replacement Therapy looks like in real life and not the glowing, linen-shirt, slow-morning version, nor the serene woman sipping herbal tea while balancing her oestrogen levels with quiet dignity.

No.

It’s me in pyjamas, squinting at blister packs, trying to remember if Tuesday still exists.

I Started HRT Because I Missed Myself

I didn’t start HRT for glowing skin or some mythical midlife reinvention. I started Hormone Replacement Therapy because my mood swings had become an extreme sport and T.O.M. (Time Of the Month) was no longer a visitor — it was a permanent resident.

Crying at emails, rage-loading the dishwasher and Googling "is this normal or am I demented?" became my norm.

Starting HRT sounded simple: you take the hormones, you feel better, you glow and you carry on.

Nobody tells you it requires the memory capacity of border control, the logistical planning of a small festival, and the emotional resilience of a woman assembling flat-pack furniture without instructions.

Because HRT isn’t just one thing, is it?

Is it a pill? Yes.
Is it a gel? Also yes.
Is it a spray? Of course.
Is it progesterone pill in chic minimalist grey that look like they belong in a Scandinavian design catalogue? Absolutely.

Welcome to the world of oestrogen and progesterone — where the benefits are brilliant, but the admin is relentless.

The Tuesday Incident (How I Invented a 10-Day Week)

Last Tuesday, I dropped my Tuesday progesterone pill down the sink. Gone!

Now, a calm and organised woman would have said, “Never mind. I’ll just move on.” Instead, I 'sensibly' reassigned the days of the week: Wednesday became Tuesday, Thursday became Wednesday and so on. By the end of the week I was operating on a self-created ten-day calendar system that absolutely nobody else recognised. I was slightly showing off to myself all was in control and I owned Hormone Replacement Therapy: quietly overthrowing the Gregorian calendar like a polite hormonal coup.

Oestrogen Spray: Left Arm? Right Arm? Who Knows.

The instructions are simple: apply to one arm. Don’t double dose. Allow to dry.

Clear.

And yet every morning I stand there thinking:

Did I spray the right arm yesterday?
Or has it always been the left?
Have I double sprayed?
Am I now 83% oestrogen and emotionally invincible?

I peer at my own limbs like they might confess. Silence - honestly, the audacity!

You’d think after everything we’ve been through together, one of them could at least raise a hand.

“Left! It was me! We did this yesterday!”

Nothing.

Just two arms. Complicit.

Progesterone: The Beautiful Grey Mood Forecast

Let’s talk about progesterone.

It comes in the most elegant shade of grey, matches most my furniture and therefore I naturally admire it.

And yet that same dignified pill quietly signals: buckle up, because 14 days on and 14 days off equals 28 days where most months insist on being 30 or 31 days long.

So now I’m cross-referencing blister packs with traditional wall calendars, my new Gregorian Calendar and the days of the week on the back of each blister pack slightly please my sense of organisation. "Let me at this: I can organise these days with ease!"

The other signal the grey carries is it's going to be T.O.M soon (Time Of the Month). Commonly, 14 day grey pills never let me get to day 5 before T.O.M starts to show and begin an unwelcome residency. And here’s the real bang for your buck — every holiday I book somehow aligns perfectly with T.O.M. (Time Of the Month).

City break? T.O.M.

Romantic weekend? T.O.M.

Important life event where I’d like to feel stable and luminous? You guessed it.

T.O.M. arrives with luggage.

At this point I don’t book holidays, I schedule them around a hormonal roulette wheel. Beach holiday? T.O.M. Spa weekend? Absolutely T.O.M.

...At this stage should I just request hotel rooms with blackout curtains and emergency chocolate?

Why Can Everyone Else Remember Their HRT Routine?

I speak to friends about their HRT routine.

“Oh I just take mine every morning,” they say breezily.

Of course you do.

Why does my Hormone Replacement Therapy routine require a whiteboard, a debrief, and possibly a project manager?

Should I be holding weekly review meetings: "Right everyone, how did we feel on Spray Day? Any feedback from Progesterone Thursday?"

It’s a one-woman boardroom, the chairperson is tired, the HR department is hormonal, and frankly the minutes are unreliable.

Do I Need an Assistant? Or Just a System?

What I clearly need is an assistant.

Failing that, a system.

Do the pills live in the coffee cupboard? Is that wise? Will I accidentally serve progesterone with oat milk?

Or do I line everything up in the bathroom at a precise angle — like a parking officer checking tyre positions?

Spray upright = taken.
Spray sideways = pending.
Spray facing left = left arm day.
Spray facing right = right arm day.

A hormonal choreography — Swan Lake - but everyone’s mildly irritable and someone has misplaced Tuesday.

But perhaps the answer isn’t architectural brilliance.

Perhaps it’s simply a tracker.

A small, unglamorous chart pinned inside the coffee cupboard or taped inside the bathroom cabinet.

Tick. Spray.
Tick. Pill.
Tick. Still operating within a standard seven-day week.

Because HRT during perimenopause is life-changing.

My mood is steadier. T.O.M. no longer runs the household like a hostile manager. I sleep. I cope. I recognise myself again (most of the time).

I just occasionally have to interrogate a grey capsule and renegotiate the calendar.

So yes — perhaps the answer isn’t architectural brilliance or inventing a ten-day week.

Perhaps it’s a small tracker. A pen. A tick. A system that does not rely on bin forensics.

Something low-tech. Foolproof. Gentle.

Because clearly the current system of "vibes and optimism" is not delivering consistent results.

Pinned in the coffee cupboard or inside the bathroom cabinet = somewhere visible. Job well done. Somewhere obvious, somewhere Future Me cannot ignore while holding caffeine and questioning life choices.

Because while Hormone Replacement Therapy may have balanced my hormones, it turns out the final frontier of perimenopause isn’t oestrogen, it’s admin.

And if I can survive mood swings, T.O.M., rogue spray arms and a hostile calendar, I can absolutely survive a small laminated tracker.

Probably.

But if Tuesday goes missing again, I’m filing a formal complaint.

END.

P.S. If you too have ever conducted bin forensics to confirm a progesterone pill, or any other form of HRT… I may have something you'll smile at:

A very simple, very calm, extremely non-judgemental HRT tracker.No apps. No passwords. No hormonal board meetings.

Just boxes and ticks with the quiet reassurance that Tuesday is, in fact, still Tuesday.

I’ll link it for you here — laminate at your own discretion.