This was a very helpful thread. Suggest we build on it – by opening to examples where, as Desert Shores said, we have sometimes made unwise choices based on desperation.
I certainly have. Chagrined to reflect on them now, but remembering that there have also been many good choices. So, forthwith, the two biggest bad decisions:
(1) I have had osteoporosis since, probably before early menopause. At around age 42 I started on HRT – first Syntest and then an estradiol patch with prometrium. I stayed on it for years. When my GYN said: no more, I started sourcing it myself from Canada. This was about 1994. I stayed on it until: in 2019 I had a couple of stress fractures in my foot --probably cause by the low bone density. I panicked. I decided I needed more estradiol. I had been cutting the patches in half all those years. In this desperate moment I put on a whole patch. Shortly after, started to have water retention and a bit of discharge from one breast. Went to the breast imaging clinic where they did multiple biopsies in a kind of frenetic hunt-and-peck as my breasts were so dense they couldn’t see what they were doing.(which in retrospect I really do believe caused the very tiny very indolent breast cancer) More about this elsewhere – I actually wrote a book about the breast cancer adventure.) In any case, I stopped the HRT. At this distance, I feel that the mistake was going from the half patch to the whole patch.
That was six years ago. At the time I felt that I had made a big mistake having stayed on the HRT for so long. Now, I wish that I had not stopped it. In retrospect I feel that I should have stayed on it, just resumed the half patch. (And now the guidance says that HRT is OK even after breast cancer for some women.) But, happy I was on HRT for as many years as I was. At the time, this went against the official guidance. But as a skinny little woman I think it probably was one of the best choices. But too late to restart now. (at age 76). So/bad choices/good choices . . . .? BTW, six years later, no recurrence.
(2) My Rybelsus adventure: two years ago, my blood glucose went higher - it was always low-prediabetic level but Repatha pushed it higher. I was already on metformin but felt I should do more. Got some Rybelsus, 3mg, and took it every other day, for several weeks. Well! Lost nearly ten pounds very quickly,(including a lot of what precious little muscle I had) and developed gallstones. A 3 mg dose is a “trainer” dose but it had a walloping effect on me. Now, a year and a half later, I am working to get some of that muscle back, and hopefully build more.
I’m really not a “move fast and break things” kind of person. But I have made some choices in a state of near panic, even as I have endlessly weighed other choices such as whether or not to start rapamycin (I haven’t).
Sharing this hoping there may be some benefit to others – especially WRT the hormone therapy debate.
Have you done anything that you wish you could undo?
