Ask Virginia Ironside

HRT boosts sex appeal

QI would just like to thank you for your advice to Barbara, in June’s issue, to ‘get help for your own sexual problems…’ Post-menopause, I had lost all desire for sex and when also it became painful I told my husband and thought, with some relief, that that was that: no more for me! However, after reading your advice, I decided to try HRT and, my goodness, are we both glad that I did! It’s only been two weeks but it’s like rolling back the years! So, thank you again and if there are any post-menopausal women reading this who think they’ve just gone off sex completely, please give HRT a try!

Name and address supplied

AI’m thrilled to hear this! But, before everyone rushes out to give it a go, it’s not always a magic bullet – though well worth trying, as you’ve found out. There are also ways of taking HRT other than orally, which affects your whole body. There are hormonal creams and gels, and even, if you prefer, little pills you can insert inside yourself which are less invasive of the system. Not to mention soothing, lubricating jelly which can ease some of the ouch-making in later life.

Betrayed by my best friend

QI feel so betrayed. I’ve found I have secondary cancer and probably won’t last until Christmas. I was very distressed to discover this, as you can imagine. However, I’ve really wanted to keep the news from my children because I know how upset they’d be. So I told my best friend and swore her to secrecy. Now, however, I find that she’s told another

virginia ironside

mutual friend. I can’t tell you how betrayed I feel. The news will now spread like wildfire. What can I do? Shall I confront her? My world was shattered anyway at the news, but this discovery has made everything even worse. The one person I thought I could trust has betrayed me.

Name and address supplied

AI can imagine how you feel and I feel so sorry for you. But remember that a secret shared is no longer a secret. You should never have told your friend. To be quite honest, the person who broke this secret in the first place was you yourself. You told her because you couldn’t bear the burden of suffering the knowledge all by yourself. Perhaps she has told this other person because, like you, she couldn’t bear the burden of this secret on her own.

Perhaps, also, she wanted to support you and felt that the more other of your friends knew about what was going on, the kinder and more understanding they would feel towards you. Rather than simmer with rage about your friend – a rage that is surely directed more at the cancer than at her, anyway – tell your children. They love you. They would also feel betrayed, in a different way, if they found out after you’d died that you hadn’t seen fit to confide such crucial information – information that will affect them deeply – in them above all.

Long walks to freedom

QReading the letter about blisters, and sympathising after a similar walk in London recently, I wondered whether lockdown hasn’t so much fattened my feet as softened them. For nearly 18 months now, I have hardly walked anywhere. Confined to my local area, I have mostly cycled – good for my health but soft on the feet – or very occasionally used my car. So I blame soft feet, not fat feet. The remedy: go for more walks.

Jeremy Colman, by email

AThank you. Dr Denis Durno from Aberdeen also wrote to say that, during a painful walk in Tuscany, he’d asked the tour guide for a remedy for the blisters everyone was enduring. He suggested placing zincoxide tape straight onto the affected part of the foot or heel. ‘As if by magic, the discomfort is immediately resolved. The other advantage of zinc-oxide tape: it is easily torn without the need for scissors. A simple and effective cure, in my experience.’

Limited power of attorney

QMay I make it clear that, even with a power of attorney (P of A), one cannot move someone against their wishes unless they are in no condition to express a view. Their wish may be clearly not in their best interests, but that is not relevant. All that is relevant is their capacity to understand what is proposed. If that is so with P of A, it will be even more the case without it. No doctor would back a move in a situation where the person is just unsafe. As I understand it, mental capacity is the key.

Phil Symmons, by email

AThank you. I’ve found that a relief to know and I hope others will, too.

Please email me your problems at problempage@theoldie.co.uk; I will answer every email – and let me know if you’d like your dilemma to be confidential.

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