Experiencing the perimenopause has many alarming downsides. But it can be sexy, too…

When Christie Watson put on an HRT patch she found herself thinking about sex, all the time. What was going on?

I began using HRT patches at 42, after a seemingly catastrophic breakdown that resulted in my climbing into a Sainsbury's fish-finger freezer. My mental health was horrendous. I felt totally outside my own skin, dissociated, and that I'd lost my sense of self. I told a therapist that I related to Mrs Dalloway, a chronically depressed - and arguably narcissistic and bourgeois - fictional Virginia Woolf character. She suggested that these feelings could all be down to perimenopause, a term I'd only heard of vaguely, in passing, even as a former nurse. Perimenopause, she told me, can be an extremely rocky road, lasting up to a decade before menopause itself.

My GP didn't bat an eyelid at my bizarre symptoms, but offered me low-dose HRT patches and described the side-effects as minimal in most people. Some women experience breast tenderness or feeling sick, or headaches but, she said, this usually settled down. I hoped the patches would lead to fewer perimenopausal symptoms and a balancing out of my mood, some comfort and at least some realism.