"I thought the symptoms were being caused by being in peri menopause since some are the same."

Thanks for making that connection. I was 55, had already gone thru the change, but symptoms were still waved away as menopausal, even tho my actual menopausal symptoms were a breeze compared to what others go thru. Finally, at age 60, an alert cardiology nurse saw my platelets had been in 600s for several years. "Hmm, let's figure this out," she said. That's when I was finally diagnosed.