What a week! I got an email on Friday 25th March asking if BBC breakfast news could interview us as they wanted to do a piece on the HRT shortage and wondered if anyone in our group had encountered the problem. I immediately sent it to Vicky with the caption OMG, OMG, OMG. Abi, the lovely lady organising it said we had come highly recommended! Can you even believe that!
They wanted to film one of our Peri-Chat & More groups, no problem I said, we have one on Thursday morning, the day the reporter was coming from London! I was all set to contact Community Stepping Stones Cafe, where we hold the meetings, to make sure they were happy with being filmed. All giddy I set about it and then I realised I had the wrong date for the meeting. It is on the 7th April! The Thursday after! Well I felt like an idiot getting back to Abi and telling her I had the wrong date!
The next few days were busy trying to get some ladies to come to the cafe (thankfully they accommodated us) on a Thursday morning at 11am. Lots of lots of Facebook posts later we had about 6-8 ladies coming and we were all set.
So the lovely Zoe Conway came on all the way from London to little old Redcar this morning. As always, our lovely friends at the Stepping Stones Community Cafe (CIC) were first to offer to support us and hosted us all morning, providing endless tea, coffee, hot chocolate and delicious cakes!
HRT shortage and access to certain medication is really a hot topic at the moment, we know in group that we have a lot of desperate ladies who can’t get hold of their current prescription and are having to change. It’s an anxious wait for lots of people. We discussed this as well as some stories that ladies were able to share.
We have never been on TV before and had no idea what to expect, but Zoe and cameraman Steve made us feel totally at ease, as usual you couldn’t shut us up!!!
What a fantastic experience it was, both Zoe and Steve made us feel so relaxed and we had a laugh along the way. It wasn’t nearly as nerve racking as we thought it would be.
The British Menopause Society has an update on the shortage – here is the link
