Marriage and Menopause Podcast Episode 25: Joint Pain

Menopause joint pain took eight years of my life before a single doctor said the word hormones.

I was forty four when my shoulder locked up so bad I couldn't lift my arm to put on my own bra. David had to dress me. The orthopedist called it frozen shoulder and said it was probably my diabetes, and then everyone stopped looking.

Nobody checked my estrogen. Not once.

Then the PAIN spread. Both shoulders. Pain in my hands, my knees, my hips, my neck, my feet. A herniated disc. Trigger finger so bad I needed surgery on my right thumb. For the better part of a year I ate ibuprofen like candy and rubbed Voltaren gel on joints that never stopped hurting.

Eight years of my body falling apart, and the one symptom everybody actually knows to look for, the hot flashes, didn't show up until the very end. That's the part women over 40 need to hear.

Perimenopause didn't announce itself with a hot flash for me. It came for my joints first, and because nobody told me that was even possible, I lost almost a decade to doctors treating one piece at a time.

This is my whole story, start to finish. The frozen shoulder, the surgery, the night in a hotel when I thought I was dying, and what finally changed when I started hormone replacement therapy.

If your body has been hurting and everyone keeps handing you a gel and a shrug, this one is for you.

We're Judy and David, a GenX couple who lived through perimenopause with zero information and built the thing we wish we'd had. Come find us.

Start your free week of the Couples Operating System: https://marriageandmenopausepodcast.com/products.html

If this episode hit home, act on it. Share it with your spouse. Sit down. Talk. Lead the change inside your own home.

This show is for couples who refuse to drift. Who refuse to lose a strong marriage to hormones. Who are willing to learn new rules when the old ones stop working.

Stronger marriages.
Direct conversations.
No avoidance.

We Deserve Better.