The women in my family have really hard menopause and are blessed to have 15 - 20 years of symptoms. We go from zip to every negative symptom in a flash. I was working in a high stress job and could not handle the symptoms so went on HRT -- they were wonderful!! 15 years later I retired and went off of HRT and got slammed. I am gradually getting over it. Right now I have a few mood swings and some hot flashes/night sweats -- unfortunately my normal body temp is freezing and the hot flashes seem to hit on a nice warm day or night when I am finally warm. I asked the doctor if there was some way to delay them until I was cold -- he asid he would be a rich man if he could do that. LOL