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catboybiologist · 1 year ago

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March 2024 documentation and transition journal

Just got my levels results back, meaning that the doc is fully updated for March:

This is possibly one of the most exciting and interesting months of HRT since starting, because I've experimented around a lot with injection doses, so let's talk about that! I'm also slapping a couple of old pics in here for reference, so I'll slap some selfie tags on this.

So, lots of interesting HRT stuff. At my last levels check, I was on 4mg injectable EV a week. And… my E actually went down, even though that’s an effectively higher dose than my previous regimen (6mg sublingual/day). Because of this, I talked with my provider, and essentially she told me to fuck around. I probably was way looser with it than she wanted me to be, but she told me to go to 8mg/week maximum, and try and settle on 6mg/week minimum. So….. here’s what I did.

1 week of 8mg.

2 weeks at 7mg.

2 weeks 6mg, during which my levels were checked at mid.

I… can’t really advocate for this. Basically, my logic was that I wanted to see what it felt like to max things out, but have my actual levels check reflect what I’m like at 6mg to know if increasing or maximizing the dose beyond that is necessary at all. Ultimately, I’ve concluded that 8mg feels too high- I start getting a bit of headache and nausea at peak. 7mg feels very comfortable. 6mg, I felt fucking miserable at trough. When I was on 4mg/week, I used a couple of sublingual pills to try and get through that, but I tried to see if I could stop doing that. It went okay for the higher doses, but on 6mg… ugh. Felt like complete shit. I’ll def be using a couple this week to get through that, probably just 4-6mg sublingual on wed/thurs to make sure I’m feeling okay.

Oh. Also. I ditched Spironolactone, against the advice of my provider.

I was getting really, REALLY irritated by the diuretic effects, so I quit it when I tried to 8mg dose just to see what would happen. I figured that 8mg would be more than enough to suppress T on its own (likely true), and so I thought it would be the best time to try that. And… when I stopped spiro, a depressive haze that had been in my head lifted very quickly. I thought it was just depression based on a rough past couple of months, and that’s probably true, but it also felt physical. The diuretic effects have also stopped, and I genuinely can’t imagine going back on spiro.

I’ve heard a lot of theoretical stuff about spiro potentially being able to inhibit growth and development. It's possibly a growth hormone inhibitor, but should be a more potent antiandrogen than anyone else. It’s…. Really hard to say whether spiro actually inhibits growth. As with a lot of transfemme physical developments, there’s never been a comprehensive, conclusive study on it, which is why its relegated to miscellaneous anecdotes that everyone will swear one way or the other on. I’ll have some opinions on this later.

So what improvement to my levels did I get out of all of this?

Well…. Good, but nothing radical. My midcycle estrogen is 159 pg/mL, which is about my target for trough. It’s a good step up from the 4mg dose, but I’m probably going to increase to 7mg/week- that felt fine to me, and I’m pretty confident that that’ll be the dose that nails it. I’m pretty deadset on going forward with that, I would just need a levels check to verify we’re all good there. (Side note, I’m a bit frustrated that my body literally seems allergic to just… stuff. Idk if I have an overactive liver or what, but my T crashed super easily, adderall consistently lasts shorter than it should, and my E is really struggling to go up.)

And did this result in any physical improvement?

I actually think that this last month has been the single fastest month of physical development I’ve ever had. Here’s some things I’ve noticed:

My breasts have become much larger and more developed in relation to my chest, with a much better shape. Comparison pictures to even just the end of January show a wild difference (sorry, not posting that publicly). To be fair, though, I’m still pretty clearly in tanner 2, and I maybe want to wait for just a bit more development before I start progesterone.

Waist measurement is still going down, and hip measurement is still holding steady. This means that, in effect, my hips are getting wider.

And this is one of the most exciting ones- my upper body seems like its getting smaller. I’m floored by this. My underbust is less, my chest looks noticeably less barrel-y, and my ribcage kind of “flows” into my waist better. I wrote a bit about this on reddit just now, but I think I know what’s happening here. Not only is fat burning from the sides of my chest as it builds on the front of my chest, I actually think my costal cartilage might be getting “tighter”, effectively pulling my ribs a bit closer in to my sternum

I have…. No way to confirm the hunches of that last one, other than the images I can show. So for educational purposes (and y’know. Making the funny women in my phone type funny syllables) Here’s a quick timeline where I think you can see the “barrellness” of my chest decreasing:

From left to right, we have September (0-1mo), December (3-4mo), March (6-7mo)

Don't worry, my shoulders are just as wide and athletic dyke-y.

Am I delusional? Is this anything? Maybe. Pictures are hard to make consistent with changes this small. But I do feel like its noticeable, and it seems like women’s cut shirts and tanks have fit me in a way that’s a lot more consistent with a cis woman’s body. Again, there’s also nsfw images, and I think they show a lot of progress, and I think I can pretty definitively say that this has been the single month with the most physical changes since, well, my first month back in September.

Why did this happen? Well, I’m working with a sample size of one here, and multiple variables have changed at the same time. There’s really three things that could be happening: increased injection dosage, ditching spiro, or the general come and go of physical changes. It’s impossible to completely know what’s going on because of this, unfortunately- I’d need way more data. That said…. This is the first new “wave” of development I’ve had since I started, and my actual blood levels didn’t increase that much. I really, really don’t want to conclude anything, but I’m kinda thinking that spiro had something to do with it. It has broad effects on physiology which aren’t entirely characterized, that could easily theoretically be inhibiting generic growth and development. That said, I think starting with a strong antiandrogen is basically necessary for HRT. It’s extremely difficult to get E levels up without robustly inhibiting T first. Obviously don’t take this as medical advice, or even a scientific opinion. This is nothing more than a hunch.

Idk. I’m happy. I feel like I finally am starting to break through the progress stall I’ve been growing increasingly frustrated with. And I think getting the proper injection dose actually worked to break through it. I’m feeling a lot better with my transition in general too. I won’t elaborate much here, but I’ve been coming out to a lot more people, and its been tentatively going about as well as I could ask. We’ll see what the future holds, but I’m excited about it.

#trans journal #hrt #transfemme hrt #mtf hrt #trans selfie #trans #transgender #trans timeline #trans progress #transition #transitioning #trans woman #trans female

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catboybiologist · 1 year ago

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Transition journal and documentation: Jan and Feb of 2024

Measurements for January are up, and February will be soon to follow! Tagging @whalesharkcat and @trans4hire here. If you want to be tagged when I post these, let me know! The advice for injections is in the journal below.

Some quick notes to clarify things:

I'm consolidating qualitative observations into my journal. Oftentimes these haven't been easy to cleanly classify into different categories of observation, so I'm not really gonna bother.

As I'm sure you've realized, the timing of these observations isn't consistent. I have a private document with exact date stamps for everything, and these are mostly right at the end of the month. But my levels checks don't match up to this cleanly, so I group them with the closest set of other measurements. Sometimes I don't have one that cleanly fits.

I can't trust myself to measure height anymore, to be blunt. I want to ask the doctor every time but chicken out about it easily.

But anyways.

And now, as a journal, a brief summary of my thoughts on the past two months:

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

*deep breathing*

fuuuuuuuucccckkkkkkkkkk

Okay. So. I'm not gonna list off everything that's happened since the year started. So many independent things started happening, one after the other, that I had to start formatting it as a bulleted list to tell people I know irl what's been going on. Each one has been a crisis on its own- massive emotional events, health problems, health problems in people close to me, transphobic drama with former "friends", academic&research problems, and a resulting mental health spiral. And all of this leading up to my qualifying exams at the end of February, for which I barely scraped by and passed.

But. With all of this. There's silver linings.

The biggest one is that the start of this year has been a stress test of my overall emotional state since starting HRT. I'm not gonna lie- if all of this had happened a year ago, I don't think I would be here now. I either would have completely snapped and done something I regret, or... yeah. But as it stands? I cried. A lot. I isolated a bit. I had mood swings and anxiety and anger and excitement and relief and highs and lows beyond my wildest dreams. It was intense. It was not pretty. But it was cathartic, and healthy. Before this, I would've processed all of this as a generic, stressful, anxiety-ridden malaise, that would've weighed down on me until a breaking point. As it stands, however, I made it. Not in a neat way, not even really in an emotionally stable way, but I made it. And there is no fucking way that would be true pre-HRT. I think I can genuinely say at this point that estrogen has been life saving for me.

In the middle of all this, I switched to injections, right at the start of February. A mistake? Maybe, but I'm too fed up with delaying my progress because "the time isn't right", so I stubbornly refused to delay that change any further. It's a goal I worked out with my provider ahead of time and I stuck to it. So how's that been?

It's been an incredible and WILD experience. I'm on estradiol valerate. For those that don't know, estradiol is conjugated with another compound, which is then cleaved over time in your body to release it. For injections, that results in a peak irculating levels about 1-3 days afer injections. Some people feel it more than others- and holy shit, do I feel it. This has given rise to "the Sundays", because on Sundays, I'm going fucking nuts. My senses are heightened, and I start craving and reacting to physical touch in intense ways. It's not always sexual- while arousal comes easier to me the closer I am to peak, mostly I just become a cuddleslut. It is WILD. I'm also more emotional and cry more easily. Some cis female friends I have confirmed that it mirrors the feelings they get at a certain point in their monthly cycle, so essentially the fluctuating levels are giving me the sensory and emotional effects of a period every week.

The flip side of this is that I feel like shit on Thursdays, like I missed a sublingual dose when I was on that. After the first two weeks, I started taking 2mg sublingual on Wednesday night and Thursday mornings to avoid this, which helped a lot. My provider specifically said this was a good idea, so if you're dealing with that yourself, consider trying it out. I might move to a 5-day injection interval instead, but we'll see.

I've only had one problem with injections so far, which I'm dealing with right now- on my fifth self injection ever, I had unsteady hands and hesitation before stabbing myself, causing a not-great needle stick. Currently, I have a nasty looking injection bruise. Not painful, and healing pretty well, but not fantastic to look at. Self injecting has been intimidating and scary, moreso than I thought it would be. But the actual physical pain is much, MUCH less than I thought it would be, its just that the lizard brain refuses to stab yourself.

If you're thinking of switching to injections, here's a bit of my advice:

keep as many oral/sublingual pills on hand as you can anyways. These will be helpful if you feel your injections aren't carrying you emotionally for the entire interval, or if you don't have an environment where you can inject regularly

If you have a provider, they should provide a nurse tutorial and consultation for you to inject properly. If they don't, try to insist on one. They'll give better advice than I can.

think less, do more. Ideally, the actual moment of the stab should be painless. Be quick and steady about it. The fluid entering feels like pressure and slight burning, but nothing more than that.

vary your injection sites. A doctor or nurse should explain this to you, but this reduces risk of doing what I did and bruising yourself.

be extremely sterile about things. All of the wiping down and sterile technique you'll hear? Don't fuck around with it. Infection is no joke, and absolutely can happen.

Purchase spare needles and syringes from a pharmacist or online. Several reasons for this- one, if you make a mistake and a needle is no longer sterile, you don't want to hesitate about throwing it away. And two... well, let's make a second point about this.

If you want to stock up on estradiol for the future (if you're worried about future access to HRT), this can be easier with injections- but you have to be careful, and you'll need extra needles (for the love of fuck, do not reuse needles). Vials will always have excess medication, because it allows standard volumes to fill and distribute, and it also ensures that needle draws will always be able to be fully submerged. Do NOT try to run your vial out. You WILL run into sterility and contamination issues. That said, vial expiration dates are typically measured from time of first puncture. This will vary, but for me, I was told that the vials are good for 4 weeks after the first puncture. This is overcautious, but not egregiously so. My recommendation would be to use each vial for 1-2 extra punctures, and open the next vial a bit later. Still get prescription refills as frequently as you can. That way, you can stock up on unpucntured vials in case anything happens to your supply. THIS SAID- if you notice ANYTHING wrong with the vial- if the seal isn't containing the fluid properly, if bits of the seal are falling into the medication, if you can see a noticable hole in the seal, DO NOT USE THAT VIAL. Look me in the fucking eye. Do. Fucking. NOT. get sepsis. Do not fuck around with this. The flexibility to be cautious about your vials is a great reason to stock up on a bit extra in the first place.

To anyone in the US, if you're comfortable with doing this to stock up, I would highly, HIGHLY recommend starting this now. Slowly start using your vials for 1-2 punctures extra, stock up unbroken vials. Just in case something bad happens after the elections.

Typically, your medication will come with two sizes of needles- a draw needle (puncture the seal and draw medication into the syringe) and an injection needle. You might want to consider going *slightly* smaller on one or both of those needles. Estradiol is dissolved in a viscous oil as medication, and can be difficult to draw and dispense as a result. But, if you're patient, a smaller gauge might help. For the draw needle, it can help do less damage to the seal and preserve it a bit longer. For the injection needle, if you have a bit more sensitive skin, it might be comforting. Don't deviate too much, though, ESPECIALLY without a medical professional involved.

Remember that I'm not a medical professional, please consult one whenever possible.

I'm still on spiro for now, and I'm continuing it until my next levels check comes back clean. I don't want to erase months of progress getting my levels up by dropping it too early.

Measurement-wise, there hasn't been much change. But I'm starting to realize that the measurements aren't really telling the full story. My breasts look so much larger and, for lack of a better word, breast-like than they did even a couple months ago, but that hasn't been coming through in the measurements very well. I think what's happening is that my fat around my sides is shrinking at the same time my breasts are growing. This is reflected a bit in terms of underbust and waist measurements, but it still seems more dramatic than those are letting on.

Face wise, I think I'm really seeing some changes now. It's hard to put into words, but I'm starting to look more and more androgynous or femme by default, especially if I shave. I'm estatic, honestly, and I hope the trend continues. My chin and nose continue to be problems, but as the structure of the face around them changes, that's becoming less and less true.

I've been getting laser, but so far it's done pretty much nothing. There's lag time, and some of my health issues meant that I had to delay a session and get both sessions at a much lower power than I would've like. I was really hoping to have visible hair removal by June or so, but it looks like that's not happening. That kinda stings, and is a huge blow to my ability to pass by the one-year mark, which has been my target.

I think my boymoding has been holding, for the most part, although its been harder. Even with my sports bras, small bumps are visible under a t shirt, and the face changes won't be unnoticable forever. I've def been more loudly bisexual, and I think most people just write it off as me being fruity. Cis people can also be pretty oblivious, especially when changes are gradual. That being said, I've been coming out slowly to people, giving my usual speech of "I'm still presenting as a man for now, but just so you know this is what's going on", which removes a lot of the pressure and anxiety from boymoding. Still, I haven't told everyone (notably, labmates and family), and my timeline of social transition between June and August seems to be holding steady.

So uh, yeah. If you're curious about anything specifically, I'm an open book, although I may move it to DMs if it gets too personal. Hope that my progress updates are helpful to at least someone!

#trans #transitioning #transgender #trans journal #trans progress #trans documentation #transfemme #trans HRT #trans woman

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