Haley Slagle: Being a woman in their midlife is, it's a wild ride. I'm 52 years old now. When I was 32 years old, I had my very first night sweat. Mention this to my doctor, ran some tests: you're totally fine. Fast forward to like my late 30s, early 40s, I am now having heart palpitations, not sleeping-- maybe 3 hours a night for a good decade. I was getting 3 to 4 hours a night. They put a heart monitor on me. You're fine. Send me home. I'm not sleeping. They start throwing Ambien at me, benzodiazepines at me, just throwing pills at me. It was awful. I felt terrible. And then like you're in a, you're stuck in a loop because like you can't sleep without the Ambien and Ambien, it's not giving you good sleep, but you're at least falling asleep. I ended up having a sleep study. Where a doctor told me that she just thought I was a short sleeper, but I never felt rested. I felt terrible all the time. I started getting really bad, bad headaches. So, now I'm having night sweats. I'm not sleeping. I'm having like some kind of cardiac problem that nobody can figure out, and now I'm having these terrible migraine headaches. They order an MRI. Nothing is wrong with me. I'm starting, they're starting to make me feel like I'm a little bit crazy because everything is coming back negative. I would have liked someone. To listen to me instead of making me feel like I was a problem, because they do make you feel like you're, you're bothering them. 2 years ago, I finally went, I went back to my PCP for my regular checkup, and I'm telling her all of these things, and at this point, I'm So exhausted, I can't make it through the day without taking a nap. I'm that tired all of the time. And my doctor finally says, let's check your hormones, and my hormones were that of like a postmenopausal woman. The doctor looks at me and, and she actually says to me that this is the phase of life now, this is how it is. And I looked at her and I said, I don't think I can survive this. I spent so many years figuring myself out. And now you're telling me that I have to do it all again. And she finally said, let's try you on some HRT like estradiol and progesterone. I start the hormone replacement therapy and within two days of being on that, I slept through the night for the first time in about 10 or 11 years. My hormone levels had dipped and nobody wanted to check it. Nobody wanted to think that that could be an issue. They just kept throwing pills at me and running tests on me, and they all came back negative, and they were looking at me like I was crazy. One doctor changed everything for me. I've been on it 2 years now. I sleep. I don't have headaches. My body doesn't hurt. My heart palpitations have completely stopped. I don't take naps at work anymore. And how many other women have gone into a situation like this and ended up. Never getting an answer. There's a patch, hormone patch shortage right now. You can't get them. It's incredibly difficult. So like, I have this strength of patch cause they switched me to something else. So then you're like trading this underground HRT thing where you're like texting someone, hey, I have this, do you want them? And you're like, yeah, sure, I'll walk over and grab them from somebody down the street. In 2026, we're having to like, help each other through this, this phase of life. Because the healthcare system doesn't want to do anything.
