I Tried Physio, Steroid Injections and Every Heat Pack in Boots. Only One Thing Gave Me My Shoulder Back. 

It came out of nowhere. No fall, no injury. Just hot flushes, anxiety, and then my shoulder. Within weeks I couldn’t put my hair up, I was stepping into my bra like a hula-hoop, and I woke up in agony at 2.30am every time I turned over.

My GP said I was “unlucky”. Nobody mentioned menopause. So I tried everything: private physio, an injection, heat packs, painkillers. A little better, a little worse, never fixed.

Then I found the one thing that finally gave me my nights back.

This is the part that made me angry. Between 45 and 55, oestrogen drops, and oestrogen helps keep the tissue around your joints supple. As it falls, the capsule around the shoulder can become inflamed, thicker and tighter. It's one reason frozen shoulder is so much more common in women our age, and why it so often appears without any injury.

In Japan, neck and shoulder pain and stiffness is used as one of the clinical markers for perimenopause. Here, I got a leaflet of exercises. Once I knew, I saw it everywhere: so many posts from women on menopause forums with shoulder issues. Why did nobody tell me before?

The only real relief I ever got was in the shower. Honestly, I'd have loved to have theshower pointing at it all day. Heat packs went cold in ten minutes and slid offthe moment I moved. One wrap I bought online barely got warm. Another worked afew times and then died, and when it worked, I loved it.

The NOVAA FIT. Shoulder was the first thing thatgave me that hot-shower feeling and kept it going. Deep heat, plus a gentlesqueeze and a soothing vibration, for twelve full minutes, while I sat on thesofa with a cup of tea. The first evening, I closed my eyes and felt myshoulder let go for the first time in months.

I hate losing my independence. At my worst, my daughter was doing up my bra and my husband was washing my hair. You don't realise how much of your dignity lives in those little things until someone else has to do them for you.

This goes on in about twenty seconds. I rest it over my shoulder, fasten the strap under my arm with my good hand, press one button. No lifting the bad arm, no calling anyone up the stairs. It sounds small. It wasn't.

Nighttime was the worst. Can't sleep on the affected side, can't get comfortable on the other. I had a wall of pillows and I still woke up every time I turned over. The pain is excruciating especially at night, and anyone who's had it knows exactly what I mean.

Now it's part of my wind-down. Twelve minutes before bed, while I read. Within a couple of weeks I noticed I wasn't bracing myself before turning over anymore. One morning I realised I'd slept through.

I dread hair-wash days. That's a sentence I never thought I'd say. For months, putting my hair up was too painful, so I just left it. I'd look in the mirror and see someone who'd given up, and I hadn't. I just couldn't lift my arm.

The first time I put a ponytail in without thinking about it, I actually stood there and laughed. It's not a miracle and it didn't happen overnight. But day by day, the things I'd stopped reaching for started coming back.

Let me add up what this cost me. Private physio at £60-£80 a session, six sessions. An injection I paid for myself because I couldn't bear the wait. A TENS machine, two heat wraps, gels, painkillers. And I'm not the only one: one woman wrote on a forum that her mam ended up paying for the injection because she couldn't bear to wait til the NHS clinic had space for her, and she's still having the same pain.

The NOVAA FIT. Shoulder is £69.99. Less than a single private appointment, and it's there every single day, on my sofa, no booking, no waiting room. I only wish I'd found it a year earlier.

Here's what nobody warns you about: when one shoulder eases, the other one often decides to freeze too. Women on the forums talk about having it for a year in one shoulder, then a further year in the other. I am just so disappointed that the other shoulder has starts to freeze, one of them wrote. I knew that feeling.

So I took the 2-pack. One stays on my side of the bed, and the other went to my sister, who started complaining about her shoulder the month she turned 49. Sound familiar?