Welcome to high5midlife
If you've ever been told your blood tests are normal while feeling anything but, I know how lonely that can feel.
I wasn't ill. I was just less. Less patient, less sharp, less present. Surviving each day rather than living it. And I genuinely didn't know why.
This is my journey through perimenopause and burnout — and my journey back to myself. And if any part of it sounds familiar, you're in the right place.
I am a clinician. I spend my days figuring out what's wrong with people and trying to fix things for them. And yet, when perimenopause arrived, I hadn't got a clue what was wrong with me or how to fix it. If that's not humbling, I don't know what is.
A few years ago I stopped feeling like myself. I lost my confidence, my drive, and my personality. I became anxious, irritable, and an even more difficult version of myself — regardless of my husband's conviction that that wasn't possible.
The testing odyssey
When I eventually connected the dots — through a perimenopause questionnaire and a series of hormone tests — things started to make sense. Getting there wasn't cheap or simple.
I became my own guinea pig.
Expensively.
ZOE gut testing. A Lumen device. Intermittent fasting. Multiple rounds of blood tests that told me everything was fine when everything was very much not fine. And finally the DUTCH Cycle Mapping test — nearly £380, an entire month of first-morning urine samples dried on filter paper and posted to a laboratory in the United States — which produced a 30-page report that my gynaecologist hadn't yet been trained to interpret. She went quiet for a moment, then apologised. She hadn't attended the course.
She prescribed HRT based on my symptoms, which is actually exactly what the guidelines recommend. I've made peace with it.
Over the coming months I'll be sharing what each of those experiences taught me—what they cost, whether they were worth it, and what I'd do differently. I'll start with the DUTCH Cycle Mapping test, because spending nearly £400 only to discover my gynaecologist hadn't yet been trained to interpret it is an experience I'd rather someone else didn't have to repeat. You can read that here.
What helped
HRT helped significantly — about 80% improvement in the anxiety that had been quietly dismantling my personality. The rest required different work entirely. Therapy. Reading about burnout and self-compassion. Building a mindfulness practice slowly and imperfectly. Exercise. Eating well. And — I will be honest with you because honesty is the whole point — avoiding wine as much as possible, which was particularly painful.
What I didn't realise until much later was how much perimenopause and burnout can overlap — and how easy it is to treat one while missing the other entirely. That's something I'll be coming back to.
I am almost there. Not arrived.
Arriving every day.
What this is — and what it isn't
High5midlife is not a medical resource and I am not a perimenopause expert. I want to be completely upfront about that.
I am a clinician sharing my personal journey — the questions I am asking, the experts I am learning from, and the things I am trying— with honest results. Everything I share is grounded in my own experience, the evidence I can find, and a healthy amount of scepticism. It is not medical advice, and it is not a substitute for your own healthcare professional.
If you choose to follow along, here's what you can expect: honest accounts of the tests and products I've tried — with real costs and real verdicts. Evidence where it exists, clearly explained. And the occasional admission that I got something wrong, because that's just as useful.
The community
More than anything, I want to build a space where women share what's actually working for them. Where you can ask the questions, you feel embarrassed asking elsewhere. Where someone says "me too" at exactly the right moment.
You don't have to white-knuckle through this alone. None of us do.
So — welcome. And I'd love to hear from you.
What was the first symptom that made you realise something wasn't right? What have you tried that genuinely helped? What do you wish someone had told you?
Know that somewhere behind this account is a clinician who also didn't have a clue, figuring it out one day at a time.
Just like you.
high five to you ♡
@high5midlife — wellness · perimenopause · life
Everything shared here reflects personal experience and is for informational purposes only. Not medical advice. Please speak to a qualified healthcare professional about your own symptoms.
