{"id":934468,"date":"2026-05-03T06:44:26","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:44:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/934468\/"},"modified":"2026-05-03T06:44:26","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T06:44:26","slug":"i-forgot-to-pack-my-hrt-on-holiday-and-had-a-disturbing-realisation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/934468\/","title":{"rendered":"I forgot to pack my HRT on holiday \u2013 and had a disturbing realisation"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s nothing like waking up on the first day of holiday<\/a>, knowing a stress-free week of R&R lies ahead. But this fantasy comes crashing down when you realise you\u2019ve left the HRT<\/a> at home. <\/p>\n

This, my long-feared nightmare, finally came true last week on the Canarian island of Fuerteventura. Having packed in a hurry, I hastily threw what I thought was my Estradiol bottle into my suitcase. When I went to slather my thighs in oestrogen gel the following morning, I realised I\u2019d brought my teen\u2019s acne cream instead. By some cruel twist of fate, they look remarkably similar. <\/p>\n

So there I was, on a much-needed holiday with my partner, without the key ingredient to my sanity. I reckoned I had a three-day window to find a local brand of oestrogen gel before I became a psycho and turned my romantic getaway into a bloodbath. <\/p>\n

Having realised my mistake on a Sunday morning, when the local pharmacy was shut, I didn\u2019t panic. I knew I\u2019d be able to go at least a day without. But I made sure I was first in line outside the pharmacy come Monday morning. Alas, what I had assumed was a pharmacy, was in fact a naturopath (the perils of staying in a hippy haven like El Cotillo) with zero stocks of HRT. A whole 24 hours wasted. The race was on. <\/p>\n

On phoning the next town\u2019s pharmacy, I was informed they wouldn\u2019t supply the drugs without a prescription. Apparently, proof that I\u2019m entitled to Estradiol back home, courtesy of the NHS app, was not enough. Nor, it seemed, was my sob story. My only option was to get a prescription from a private doctor. This felt like a major hassle and a major expense. So I began thinking, hey, I can do this, I can go without HRT for a week. <\/p>\n

The following morning, on day two, I awoke full of brain fog. Exercise<\/a> has always been my first line of menopausal defence, so I knew it was nothing that couldn\u2019t be cleared with a quick workout. By night three, though, I woke at 1am in a savage sweat. Going cold turkey had turned me into a roasting old bird. Worse still, I was overtaken by irrational anxiety, a notoriously insidious menopause symptom. Suddenly, any amount of hassle and expense seemed worth it. <\/p>\n

After some frantic googling, I found an online doctor service called Doctorsa<\/a>, who, for only \u00a317.30, would give me the prescription I craved. I booked an appointment for the following morning. All done over WhatsApp, it was a seamless experience that swiftly delivered my longed-for prescription to my inbox.<\/p>\n

Cycling to the pharmacy in the next town, my anxiety about being on the \u2018wrong\u2019 side of a busy and unfamiliar road was off the scale. When I finally got my hands on the goods, after parting with another \u00a313.90 (God bless the NHS and its HRT Prepayment Certificate, which covers a year\u2019s supply for a mere \u00a319.80), I ripped open the packaging with all the desperation of an addict hungry for her next fix. I smeared my thighs in HRT, right there on the pavement.<\/p>\n

Getting my mitts on Spanish Estradiol had an instant calming effect. So much so that I started questioning whether my returning menopausal symptoms were real. That brain fog, could it have been a hangover? My nervous partner had been plying me with alcohol in an attempt to stave off any potential hormonal meltdowns. That night sweat? Well, it\u2019s pretty warm in Fuerteventura. And the cycling anxiety? As a non-driver, even cycling in the UK brings me out in hives. <\/p>\n

Dr Paula Briggs, a British Menopause Society trustee, says women don\u2019t need to panic if they can\u2019t get access to HRT for a short while. This is especially the case on holiday, where the usual stressors are often absent. She is, of course, right. My moments of anxiety were more likely induced by panic about forgetting my HRT than lower levels of oestrogen. On reflection, I didn\u2019t turn into the grumpy ogre of my nightmares. Yet had I been back at home surrounded by deadlines, domestic duties and troublesome teens, it may have been a different story.<\/p>\n

\u201cWomen are being made to believe that their world will fall apart without HRT, and this is wrong,\u201d says Dr Briggs. \u201cThe reality of temporarily going without HRT is that many women will have no adverse effects, and some women, particularly younger women, might actually feel better. That said, if symptoms are going to recur, they will likely do so in a few days. How difficult this will be for an individual woman will depend on symptom severity prior to using HRT and for how long she\u2019s been using.\u201d<\/p>\n

If, like me, you\u2019re so psychologically dependent on HRT that you can\u2019t forgo your daily fix, Dr Briggs says that once HRT is being used again, returning to typical oestrogen levels \u201cwill likely take around the same length of time that it took for menopausal symptoms to return. For most women, this means days rather than weeks\u201d. She adds that it\u2019s crucial not to try and play catch-up by upping the dose to compensate for the absent period. \u201cWould anyone consider a week\u2019s antidepressant to catch up if they ran out? Of course not. Some experts can give people the idea that hormones, in whatever dose, are safe. That\u2019s not true and could lead to cardiovascular side effects, including stroke.\u201d<\/p>\n

If I\u2019d had access to this wisdom while I was in Fuerteventura, I could have saved myself some logistical stress and quite a few euros by sacrificing HRT for a week. <\/p>\n

Dr Briggs tells me this situation can even be a chance for women to wean themselves off entirely. \u201cI had a friend,\u201d she says, \u201cwho went on a six-month sabbatical without taking sufficient HRT. She experienced no adverse effects and used it as an opportunity to discontinue HRT. For some women, it\u2019s liberating not to be medicated.\u201d <\/p>\n

As someone who\u2019s used HRT for nearly five years, I can see the appeal. If I\u2019m brave enough, perhaps my next holiday will double as an HRT-free holiday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s nothing like waking up on the first day of holiday, knowing a stress-free week of R&R lies…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":934469,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[126,105,99687,2011,16,15],"class_list":["post-934468","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-features","tag-health","tag-hrt","tag-menopause","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116509295606587621","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934468","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=934468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/934468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/934469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=934468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=934468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=934468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}