My Hormone Journey

I started having problems in my later 30's. My monthly cycle was difficult, but even more so were the emotional upheavals that came with my PMS. Not knowing anything about natural solutions, I opted to have a total hysterectomy when I was 38. I thought this would be the answer I was looking for to having more even moods (help my husband out!), getting rid of the headaches, water retention, bloating, food cravings, cramps and general lousy feeling. Little did I know that I was starting on a different journey.
After my hysterectomy, in the hospital I was started on Premarin. This gave me a continual headache, so I tried several different oral estrogens until I found one I could tolerate. Back then--in the 90's--the dose was .90 mg/day.
Then started another host of issues, one of the worst was sleeplessness. I struggled for about 6 years with different problems until I found natural progesterone cream. I was excited to try it, as I knew that immediately I could cut my estrogen in half which cut my cancer risk from that in half. At first I didn't notice any difference in my symptoms, until my doctor helped me to increase my natural progesterone cream and told me how to better use it. Immediate relief!!!
I began sleeping better and was happy to have other symptoms relieved from what I now believe was estrogen dominance. I also started taking DHEA a few years later which helped everything work better, both estrogen and progesterone.
I also switched over to bio-identical estrogen a few years ago. I feel that this is a safer option, and I have done a saliva test a couple of times to try to keep my hormone levels in balance.
I love Dr. John Lee's books, esp. What Your Doctor May NOT Tell You About Menopause. I have learned so much from them and keep learning. We have many years of his newsletter and I still use the articles as reference for helping others.
I do have a couple of concerns and would like to get some input from some of you on your experience. I am small framed and that shows up as osteopenia on bone density tests. I even lost bone mass between my two tests. That's another whole blog--my experience with calcium and bone density issues.
I'm also concerned about the push in the legislature to take away our access to estriol, which is in most compounded bio identical hormones. Any thoughts?