During the summer I was experiencing heart palpitations, exhaustion, and almost constant, relenting, all-over hot flashes. Any amount of activity would bring at least one (and usually all three) of these lovely symptoms crushing down on me. Needless to say, I wasn’t able to do a whole lot of anything and I was cranky as hell. With COVID-19 still in full swing, we were very careful and didn’t venture out too much; I felt like a caged animal: like an angry, sweaty, badger and since I wouldn’t be able to start HRT until the Fall, I had to “sweat” it out.

I turned my attention to my blood pressure. I had been on high blood pressure medicine years ago but then was weaned off and hadn’t been taking meds for it ever since. I purchased a new BP cuff and started using it regularly: it was evident that something was wrong — the numbers were incredibly high and I was worried. It took a couple of months and two medications to get things under control.

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I finally decided to have a cervical surgery for my ongoing neck/shoulder/nerve issues. Over the past 7 years, I had done everything under the sun to get some relief including anti-inflammatories, opioids, muscle relaxers, medical marijuana and CBD, injections, massage, TENS, and physical therapy. Due to my J/RA for almost 50 years, my neck is auto-fused in two places and I have severe degeneration with both spinal and foraminal stenosis resulting in pain, tingling, numbness and nerve damage.

Overall the surgery seemed to help a wee bit but not as much as I had hoped. But more about that later…