Karen Needs Her Hormones

GenX has reached menopause and we are not going to sit down and be quiet.

Side note: this is not intended to malign anyone named Karen. As a matter of fact the only women named Karen I know are lovely.

The trope exists of the middle-aged white woman who is displeased with everyone and wants to speak to the manager. Complete with big hair and even bigger attitude, as women we are told not to be so rude and impolite. 

But sometimes, you gotta break out your inner Karen because people are idiots.

Enter the modern conversation about perimenopause. Generation X is the ones who had to figure it all out on their own, preceded by the generation who listened to the experts (that we have since discovered are also mostly idiots). I believe that we learn over time and people do the best with what they have, no shade to the Boomers and Silent Generation. But when one article came out denouncing hormone therapy, everyone fell in line and a whole generation of women are suffering from irreversible health conditions that could’ve been prevented.

Enter GenX, and we aren’t having it. We want the hormones, and we have the experts shouting it from the rooftops and providing the evidence based info. Which brings me to my own hormone story and the (almost) Karen incident. 

I am…not ready…for systemic HRT (hormone replacement therapy). My main reason is that I am still hopeful for another baby and don’t want to “break” my body. Also, side note, I had some leftover placenta capsules from baby #6 and they have been incredible at managing some symptoms so I’m good. But…I have been having some genitourinary symptoms, and I finally decided that topical estrogen was something I wanted to try. 

Let the drama begin. 

First, I don’t have an OB/GYN. I’ve always used a midwife and as a SA survivor finding a new provider is a nope. So I explored online options like Midi and Winona. Midi had no appointment openings at all (even into next year) and Winona is price gouging for convenience. Our insurance carrier offers a Telehealth platform for urgent and preventive care, so I decided to do the responsible adult thing and use what we’re already paying for.

Being a semi-crunchy person who generally hates taking medicine, the first provider I chose described herself as a holistic practitioner, so I thought she would be somewhat aligned. On the screen appeared an older blonde woman with a Germanic accent and a decidedly hippie vibe. As I started to launch into my request, she stopped me nearly immediately when she discovered I’m still breastfeeding (a toddler not a newborn). 

She became visibly agitated and refused to prescribe it, saying over and over that she was a “purist.” I even provided research showing that vaginal estrogen is used in women who are breastfeeding immediately postpartum that have had a traumatic delivery to speed healing. No, she’s a purist. But at least she refunded me for the visit and suggested I see someone else.

Weeks later, I met with another provider, who fairly easily prescribed the medication, but then gave me a bunch of requests and referrals (apparently this is CYA standard practice for hormone therapy).  She said she was going to send the prescription to the pharmacy and it would be ready in an hour. 

Is the embarrassment included?

Now we begin the part of the experience that would have felled someone with less confidence. 2 hours later, I called the pharmacy to inquire if it was ready…side note, when did 99% of pharmacy employees become men??? I was a pharmacy tech for a decade and it was all women except the pharmacists. They couldn’t find the prescription. No big  deal, because I did change the location for this RX because I had errands on another side of town. Maybe it’s at my normal pharmacy. Another man, no, it’s not. 

I reached out to the telehealth company, and their chat feature was so slow it was nonfunctional. I was forced to CALL them, and like most women my age, I despise phone calls. For some reason my kids seem to think that putting the phone to my ear is an invitation to create 7 kinds of chaos all at once. I spoke with a rep who said they would escalate my problem to clinical services and they would call me back. 

Two hours later, as I’m getting blood drawn for yet another test (aging sucks), I received a message in the telehealth app informing me that the RX was at the pharmacy. I called them again, and this time they recognized me from the caller ID. Are you shocked if I say it still wasn’t there?? Of course there was no way to respond to the telehealth message so I had to call them back.

Karen is calling…and she is angry. Not because sometimes things don’t work properly, or at the pharmacy, but because the telehealth rep did not seem to understand that the RX WAS NOT AT THE PHARMACY. She just kept repeating snippets of the message, the pharmacy location, the name of the medicine, and I just kept saying over and over, “Yes, it’s not there.”

At this point I was literally in the parking lot of the store because I was picking up ice cream. I told the rep I was going to walk in the store and put the pharmacy staff on the phone so they could tell her it’s not there. The fact that I had to go to these lengths to get a prescription is ridiculous. 

As I put the lady on speaker on the phone so we could publicly discuss the prescription for vaginal estrogen cream (yikes), I had to just laugh to keep the embarrassment at bay. I mean, how many times can we say vagina to strange men before sinking into the floor? Ultimately, the rep said it would be handled. 

I told the pharmacy staff I knew it wasn’t their fault, and made some jokes about not messing with hormonal women, and left. Several hours later I got a call from the pharmacy informing me I had a prescription to pick up. When I went through the drive thru, they recognized me again….so I became the crazy lady with the vaginal estrogen prescription. Maybe I’ll just never go back to that location. 

I tell you this very long story to share that talking about hormones, and vaginal estrogen cream can be slightly embarrassing. But taking charge of our health journey is ultimately no one else’s responsibility. Especially when we’re still dealing with a world that believes it’s dangerous to supplement hormones. Far more dangerous are the multiple organ systems that fail catastrophically without these critical hormones. Like my mom, who fell and traumatically broke her hip at age 68, but is no longer a candidate for HRT. 

I somewhat can’t believe that my first post is about perimenopause and hormones, but I work with women and our conversations should be about all the things that make our lives better or worse. And in 2025, the current research clearly states that hormone replacement therapy does in fact create a Radiant Life. And if that means we need to sometimes be a Karen to get people to listen, then I need to speak with a manager…please.