Discharged two years ago and the leaking has crept back since the menopause. Can I go back, or do I start again at the GP?

I did a course of pelvic floor physio about two and a half years ago, at 52, for leaking when I coughed or ran for a bus. It worked. I was discharged with a sheet and a "keep them up" and I did, more or less, for about a year.

Since then the menopause has arrived properly, the hot flushes and the not sleeping and everything else, and over the last six months the leaking has come back. Not as bad as before, but the sneeze one is definitely back and there is a new thing where I need to go much more urgently than I used to.

Is this just the menopause and I have to live with it? Can I go straight back to the physio service or am I starting all over again at the GP and the waiting list? I really do not want to wait another nine months.

Ring the physio service first and ask. Mine let me self refer back within twelve months of discharge and nobody had told me. Two and a half years might be outside their window, but the only way to know is to ask the actual service rather than assume.

Worth noting the urgency is new. When I went back with my cough setback, they treated the old symptom and the new symptom as two different questions. Say both, separately, wherever you end up.

There is a page on here about the menopause and the pelvic floor that I sent to my mum last year. The bit that stuck with her was that symptoms changing at the menopause is a reason to be reassessed, not a reason to give up.

Also, the urgency thing: write a diary for a few days before whichever appointment you get. It makes the new symptom visible rather than a description.

Mo Hassan said:

a reason to be reassessed, not a reason to give up

I needed to hear that from somebody other than me. Rang the service. Too long since discharge to self refer, but they said a GP referral marked as a re-referral goes onto their list with a note, rather than right to the back. Appointment with the GP on Friday.

GP was good. Took the urgency seriously as a new symptom, checked a urine sample, and did the re-referral there and then. She also wants to talk about the menopause side of it at a separate appointment, which I gather is a medication conversation I will have with her rather than here.

Diary starts tomorrow. Thank you all.