Eligiu
Bluelight Crew
- Joined
- Jul 8, 2017
- Messages
- 1,428
Somewhat long post, but don't know why my levels are rising.
So I've been on HRT for close to a decade now. Started November 2015.
I have been on every conceivable form of HRT testosterone except the ones which are dangerous (pellets) in my country.
I do NOT dose to bulk, though I am happy with any gains I have made through my transition which have happened 'naturally' (and I say naturally because my HRT dose is far lower than any of you guys would take to be bulking up, and a trans body builder who has won competitions and uses steroids, Alex Tilicia talks about dosing and being trans and due to in the past having my testosterone go super fucking high and aromatising back into estrogen and all the *lovely* awesome things that came along with that, I have never been much interested in using it for that reason) and my fat redistribution mainly.
My build is slim/athletic - I play/have played competitive level soccer and lacrosse with cisgender men, though I am a goalie in lacrosse (I do run on field a lot however) but this is in Australia, so like... Don't go assuming I'm like a world record holder. This is Saturday amatuer competition men's sport at the top level, or close to it.
At first I was on what is called 'primoteston' which apparently is testosterone enantate 250mg/1ml. I took that every 3 weeks, from November 2015 until late, must have been December 2017 or early January 2018.
Initially in my transition I was eh, a bit fat lol. I was 90kg, and 178cm tall. Which is maybe 200 pounds, 5"10 ish. I ate a fuck tonne of pizza and drank a shitload of beer in Germany lmfao. So when I needed to do the shots myself I had plenty of fat and shit to grab onto.
Cue homelessness and meth and heroin/codeine and Xanax and everything else addiction and no food and whatever. I dropped 20kg in 2 months and I didn't feel confident doing my own shots anymore. So I got the nurses at my university clinic to do them.
In early 2018 I went overseas to Germany to complete my final German language course for my degree, and would be staying a total of 2 months give or take. And I was apprehensive about doing my own shots due to fucking them up in the past. So I saw my endocrinologist, and he agreed to swap me to reandron (testosterone undecanoate) which is an 8-12 weekly shot of 1000mg/4ml of testosterone. The whole point was I'd time it so I'd do one shot just before I left, and then get back in time for another shot. Worked perfectly.
Then I just stayed on that the whole next while. But like an idiot, I got slack on blood tests.
By the time I tested my testosterone in January 2019, in *was* technically doping lol. My testosterone was 52, and in Australia we measure normal levels as between 12-24. 24 being the absolute highest, and given it was 52 just before I had a shot, goddamn it must have been higher during the trough. The reason it got so high that time was that I was taking the highest dose, 1000mg/4ml, at only 8 week intervals. Not my smartest move.
Thankfully that time, no unwanted side effects.
The doctor who I saw when I had the blood tests happened to be one in a country town I was living in due to doing a legal placement there. He told me (and I make no comment on the accuracy or truth of this, and found out later it also did me no help) that gel can be better for people who have things like bipolar, as the daily dosing doesn't have the peak and trough that reandron has. Now I later found out that was bullshit, but I was concerned at my T being 52 so I asked my regular GP who managed my testosterone after the endocrinologist was happy with my progress to swap me to gel.
I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I waited like 4 months for my testosterone to drop low enough to start dosing again. And I started. And almost immediately on a full dose (4 pumps) my T rose above normal limits again, so my GP reduced me to 3 pumps, then 2 in order to manage this issue.
This seemed to fix it, but by the end of 2020 I had issues arising from hormones again, and I asked him in desperation (I was having periods, which I had not had since my first testosterone shot and which made me want to fucking die) to check my estrogen. When my bloods came back my testosterone was over 50, my estrogen was near 800. He promptly sent me to a specialist as he was honest that he had no clue how to fix this and I needed to see someone who did.
When I saw her, the first thing she did was put me on progesterone, this tanked my estrogen thankfully and I stopped having monthly reminders of my cursed birth. She also told me that due to my low body fat percentage (I am generally, and very much was at this time incredibly lean) that gel tends to stay in muscles when there is low body fat and it builds up and up and up.
She dropped my dose to 1 pump. My testosterone dropped to 4. At this stage I relented and went back on the shots.
It took a fucking probably year of fiddling with the dose spacing of 12 weeks, and not being on 1000mg/4ml but 3ml to get to stable levels finally.
Cue the next issue. I had a hysterectomy. I'd been planning one since I started transitioning, and only due to lack of time in 2018 onwards did I not do it (dedicating too much time to sport and law school meant no time off) but last year I finally had time, the support due to life circumstances and did it.
With full awareness that I now need hormones my whole life going forward, and the knowledge I may end up needing supplemental estrogen in addition to testosterone I went through with this procedure because I never ever again wanted to ever fucking deal with that shit. No thanks. Plus the concept of birthing my own children has forever been repulsive to me. So this was a natural step.
I got my most recent blood's done, after accidentally getting them done a day late my specialist sent me away and booked me to come back the following week.
And my testosterone is high AGAIN! And this time she doesn't know what the fuck is causing it. My weight does and has fluctuated yes, between maybe 68kg-72kg but I exercise weekly, I often walk 2 hours to and from my GP. I do kickboxing for an hour every week. My medications have not changed.
I have now been shifted from 1000mg/3ml shot 12 weeks apart to 1000mg/2ml shit 14 weeks apart. It's been 13 weeks since my last shot. At week 12 my testosterone was 24, which is the absolute higher upper limit. She couldn't give me my shot and booked me to come back in a month and a half. At this rate it'll be 18 goddamn weeks between shots.
I have always considered myself to be naturally high in testosterone. People who see pictures of me before I started hormones comment that I look more androgynous than any trans man they have seen. I pass as cis (with underwear on obviously) my voice is very deep, I have a lot of body and facial hair, I was able to lift pretty decent weights (double my BW deadlifting and squatting, fuck all benchpress because soccer lol but still I was stronger than my cis friend I went to the gym with. He commented that my power to weigh ratio was 'insane' for someone who didn't train much).
The fuck is causing this issue?
And please, sincere suggestions only - I have reached a time long ago in my transition where I no longer care to hear the opinions of people who think I am delusional and tricking myself. I'm happy as fuck with what testosterone has done to my body, I would just like to know whether anyone here has insight my specialist wasn't able to offer me as to why my body seems to perpetually want to produce an excess of testosterone.
There is zero point passing comment about the effectiveness of testosterone on my body, and my subsequent improved quality of life. I pass as a cis guy to anyone who walks past me on the street and when I look in the mirror, I finally see me (except for the barber cutting an extra cm off my hair last week but you know, Barber's hear 'just a trim' and they go 'oh I'll just cut half of it off). Aside from that, transitioning is the one thing in my life that has kept me alive, honest to god.
So I've been on HRT for close to a decade now. Started November 2015.
I have been on every conceivable form of HRT testosterone except the ones which are dangerous (pellets) in my country.
I do NOT dose to bulk, though I am happy with any gains I have made through my transition which have happened 'naturally' (and I say naturally because my HRT dose is far lower than any of you guys would take to be bulking up, and a trans body builder who has won competitions and uses steroids, Alex Tilicia talks about dosing and being trans and due to in the past having my testosterone go super fucking high and aromatising back into estrogen and all the *lovely* awesome things that came along with that, I have never been much interested in using it for that reason) and my fat redistribution mainly.
My build is slim/athletic - I play/have played competitive level soccer and lacrosse with cisgender men, though I am a goalie in lacrosse (I do run on field a lot however) but this is in Australia, so like... Don't go assuming I'm like a world record holder. This is Saturday amatuer competition men's sport at the top level, or close to it.
At first I was on what is called 'primoteston' which apparently is testosterone enantate 250mg/1ml. I took that every 3 weeks, from November 2015 until late, must have been December 2017 or early January 2018.
Initially in my transition I was eh, a bit fat lol. I was 90kg, and 178cm tall. Which is maybe 200 pounds, 5"10 ish. I ate a fuck tonne of pizza and drank a shitload of beer in Germany lmfao. So when I needed to do the shots myself I had plenty of fat and shit to grab onto.
Cue homelessness and meth and heroin/codeine and Xanax and everything else addiction and no food and whatever. I dropped 20kg in 2 months and I didn't feel confident doing my own shots anymore. So I got the nurses at my university clinic to do them.
In early 2018 I went overseas to Germany to complete my final German language course for my degree, and would be staying a total of 2 months give or take. And I was apprehensive about doing my own shots due to fucking them up in the past. So I saw my endocrinologist, and he agreed to swap me to reandron (testosterone undecanoate) which is an 8-12 weekly shot of 1000mg/4ml of testosterone. The whole point was I'd time it so I'd do one shot just before I left, and then get back in time for another shot. Worked perfectly.
Then I just stayed on that the whole next while. But like an idiot, I got slack on blood tests.
By the time I tested my testosterone in January 2019, in *was* technically doping lol. My testosterone was 52, and in Australia we measure normal levels as between 12-24. 24 being the absolute highest, and given it was 52 just before I had a shot, goddamn it must have been higher during the trough. The reason it got so high that time was that I was taking the highest dose, 1000mg/4ml, at only 8 week intervals. Not my smartest move.
Thankfully that time, no unwanted side effects.
The doctor who I saw when I had the blood tests happened to be one in a country town I was living in due to doing a legal placement there. He told me (and I make no comment on the accuracy or truth of this, and found out later it also did me no help) that gel can be better for people who have things like bipolar, as the daily dosing doesn't have the peak and trough that reandron has. Now I later found out that was bullshit, but I was concerned at my T being 52 so I asked my regular GP who managed my testosterone after the endocrinologist was happy with my progress to swap me to gel.
I waited. And I waited. And I waited. I waited like 4 months for my testosterone to drop low enough to start dosing again. And I started. And almost immediately on a full dose (4 pumps) my T rose above normal limits again, so my GP reduced me to 3 pumps, then 2 in order to manage this issue.
This seemed to fix it, but by the end of 2020 I had issues arising from hormones again, and I asked him in desperation (I was having periods, which I had not had since my first testosterone shot and which made me want to fucking die) to check my estrogen. When my bloods came back my testosterone was over 50, my estrogen was near 800. He promptly sent me to a specialist as he was honest that he had no clue how to fix this and I needed to see someone who did.
When I saw her, the first thing she did was put me on progesterone, this tanked my estrogen thankfully and I stopped having monthly reminders of my cursed birth. She also told me that due to my low body fat percentage (I am generally, and very much was at this time incredibly lean) that gel tends to stay in muscles when there is low body fat and it builds up and up and up.
She dropped my dose to 1 pump. My testosterone dropped to 4. At this stage I relented and went back on the shots.
It took a fucking probably year of fiddling with the dose spacing of 12 weeks, and not being on 1000mg/4ml but 3ml to get to stable levels finally.
Cue the next issue. I had a hysterectomy. I'd been planning one since I started transitioning, and only due to lack of time in 2018 onwards did I not do it (dedicating too much time to sport and law school meant no time off) but last year I finally had time, the support due to life circumstances and did it.
With full awareness that I now need hormones my whole life going forward, and the knowledge I may end up needing supplemental estrogen in addition to testosterone I went through with this procedure because I never ever again wanted to ever fucking deal with that shit. No thanks. Plus the concept of birthing my own children has forever been repulsive to me. So this was a natural step.
I got my most recent blood's done, after accidentally getting them done a day late my specialist sent me away and booked me to come back the following week.
And my testosterone is high AGAIN! And this time she doesn't know what the fuck is causing it. My weight does and has fluctuated yes, between maybe 68kg-72kg but I exercise weekly, I often walk 2 hours to and from my GP. I do kickboxing for an hour every week. My medications have not changed.
I have now been shifted from 1000mg/3ml shot 12 weeks apart to 1000mg/2ml shit 14 weeks apart. It's been 13 weeks since my last shot. At week 12 my testosterone was 24, which is the absolute higher upper limit. She couldn't give me my shot and booked me to come back in a month and a half. At this rate it'll be 18 goddamn weeks between shots.
I have always considered myself to be naturally high in testosterone. People who see pictures of me before I started hormones comment that I look more androgynous than any trans man they have seen. I pass as cis (with underwear on obviously) my voice is very deep, I have a lot of body and facial hair, I was able to lift pretty decent weights (double my BW deadlifting and squatting, fuck all benchpress because soccer lol but still I was stronger than my cis friend I went to the gym with. He commented that my power to weigh ratio was 'insane' for someone who didn't train much).
The fuck is causing this issue?
And please, sincere suggestions only - I have reached a time long ago in my transition where I no longer care to hear the opinions of people who think I am delusional and tricking myself. I'm happy as fuck with what testosterone has done to my body, I would just like to know whether anyone here has insight my specialist wasn't able to offer me as to why my body seems to perpetually want to produce an excess of testosterone.
There is zero point passing comment about the effectiveness of testosterone on my body, and my subsequent improved quality of life. I pass as a cis guy to anyone who walks past me on the street and when I look in the mirror, I finally see me (except for the barber cutting an extra cm off my hair last week but you know, Barber's hear 'just a trim' and they go 'oh I'll just cut half of it off). Aside from that, transitioning is the one thing in my life that has kept me alive, honest to god.