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The menopause doctor visit prep sheet
Most menopause appointments last 10 to 15 minutes. The women who come out with a plan are almost always the ones who walked in organized. Fill this in, print it, and hand it over — or print it blank and write on it in the waiting room.
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Menopause appointment — prep sheet
Bring this to your visit. One page, in the order a clinician will want it.
1. My top 3 symptoms — ranked by daily impact
Rank by what costs you the most, not by what sounds most alarming.
2. What changed with my periods
3. What I have already tried
4. Medications and supplements I take
5. History my clinician needs to know
These change which treatments are appropriate. Tick anything that applies to you or a close relative.
6. Things I want to raise even though they feel awkward
All three are common and treatable. Tick to remind yourself to say them out loud.
7. What I want from this visit — one sentence
8. Questions to ask before I leave
Pick the three that matter most to you.
9. After the visit — write it down before you drive home
What was decided, the exact name/dose/form of anything prescribed, and the reassessment date.
Menova · menova.life — independent, we sell no hormones. This sheet is general education, not medical advice, and not a diagnosis. Bring it to a licensed clinician.
Why a prepared appointment goes better
It is rarely because the clinician does not care. It is structural: the visit is short, menopause training is thin in most medical curricula, and the symptoms are scattered across sleep, mood, joints, periods, and libido — so they sound like five problems rather than one pattern. Almost everyone also forgets their third and fourth symptom under pressure. A written page removes all of that at once.
Open with the pattern, not the list
The first ninety seconds set the direction of the whole visit. Something close to this works:
"Since about March, my cycle went from 28 days to 22, I stopped sleeping through the night, and I'm getting hot flashes most days. The sleep is the part wrecking my work. I've tried magnesium and cutting caffeine — no real change. I'd like to talk about whether this is perimenopause and what my options are."
That is under twenty seconds and contains a timeline, a cluster, a priority, what you have tried, and a request. It is very hard to answer that with "it's probably just stress." Our guide to walking in prepared rather than dismissed covers what to do if it happens anyway.
What to do before the appointment
If you have a few weeks, track first. Eight to twelve weeks covers two or three cycles and shows a pattern clearly, but even two weeks of rough notes beats memory — the five fields worth recording are in our guide to tracking symptoms usefully. If your appointment is tomorrow, the fastest route is the free 2-minute self-check, which turns what you have been feeling into a printable summary to staple to this sheet.
It is also worth reading up on the options beforehand so the conversation is two-sided rather than a verdict: HRT risks and benefits, the different forms of HRT, non-hormonal options, and what it actually costs.
If the appointment does not go well
A visit that ends with no plan and no explanation is grounds for a second opinion, not a year of waiting. Our guide to finding a clinician who actually knows menopause covers how to identify one, and our independent comparison of menopause telehealth services covers the remote options, including which ones bill insurance.
Why this is free
Menova is an independent publication. We sell no hormones, no supplements, and no reports you need to buy to use this page. There is no email gate because gating a prep sheet behind an address would make it a lead form rather than a useful tool. When we link to a care provider elsewhere on the site, it is disclosed — see our affiliate disclosure.