Gina: It wasn’t until I went on EmpowHer that I finally realized I needed some hormones and I didn’t care at that point, side effects, it didn’t matter. I’ve realized after listening to Michelle’s story and she called me. I was just amazed. I thought when I clicked on to, “Share your story with Michelle,” I thought I was going to, you know, go to some group of people that worked with her and I would get an answer from somebody else and she called me and said, “No matter what time it is, call me back.”

She left me three different phone numbers and I talked to her for two hours and she knew who I was, she remembered me, and I don’t even know if I gave her my name, but—and everything I told her was similar to hers with the hormones. She said, “Just go to your doctor and ask them to do a full level. They’ll do certain thyroid tests, but they don’t go further and do additional thyroid tests.” And I think a lot of times what holds the doctors back are the insurance companies. They will only test so far because they are only depending on certain symptoms. “Oh, we’ll do a basic thyroid profile and we’ll do CBC,” which is just your sugar levels I believe and I don’t even know to be honest.

So it was after my conversation with her that I went to the doctor and I had all the blood work-up done, which you would have thought that a more extensive blood work-up would have been done prior to my two procedures.