T update: six weeks
Jun. 18th, 2013 01:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aidenonymousFor reference, weeks four, three, two, and one. I'm doing these less often because changes are so slow now and the novelty is wearing off -- this is good, though, that it's just becoming part of the routine, not something enormously distracting. That being said, I'm going to be hard to reach online for a bit while I catch up on work I fell behind on due to being totally preoccupied with trans stuff during my first month on T, so don't expect to hear much from me until my eight week update.
I've been using the AndroGel 1% metered pump, one 1.25 g pump daily. I finally got details on my levels from my endo -- pre-T 21 ng/dL and on-T 180 ng/dL. Both of these are lower than I expected given that 1) I've had some signs of high T levels for several years and 2) at the very least my voice has changed remarkably quickly given my low dose. In any case, I had to switch from applying the gel to my shoulders and upper back to my lower back and sides starting about five days ago. I got an enormous cyst on my upper back/shoulder and now believe that the gel is acting locally to some extent by exacerbating my already severe acne in that area. Hopefully my bacne will calm down now that I've changed application sites.
Cycle:
I got another period on T, this one as early and more painful as the last (22 days since the previous one and 33 days since starting T), but at least it was shorter and no heavier, a difference I credit to actually taking my iron supplement normally. I am not yet ready to increase my dose to combat this effect, but I am certainly considering it, especially if there's some middle ground between keeping it as it is and outright doubling it, since there's no metered dose between 1.25 g and 2.5 g. I know there's AndroGel 1.62%, and if the smallest metered dose on that is also 1.25 g, I might request that in the fall when I next see my endo. Sort of related, I experienced fluid retention with my period, which has happened a handful of times in my entire life. This is definitely the first time there's been evidence in my face, and it was a little alarming to see my face shape different from what I'm used to. Luckily it went away within 24 hours of when I noticed it. Weird!
Voice:
I had a cold for a week and am still suffering some effects when it comes to controlling the pitch and volume of my voice. Despite this, my partner and my best friend, after not seeing me for a week and a year respectively, noticed my voice had changed, but other friends I hadn't seen in a week, a month, and a year did not notice any difference. I am still read as female on the phone, but I'm read as male once I speak in meatspace if I'm using an indoor voice. I am still getting days when my throat feels swollen (and in a way that is different from when it's just postnasal drip from this cold), and I'm still keeping digital records -- it seems like it's really slowing down now, but that might be due to this cold affecting my ability to control my voice. While I'm at this plateau, I would really like to start practicing using my chest voice but am pretty confused about how to go about doing it.
Muscles:
I've started noticing growth on my upper arms and shoulders even though I haven't been doing any exercise beyond lazily trying to do pull-ups a couple times a week. (I can now do 6, up from 4 pre-T, so I wouldn't say I've gotten stronger beyond what one would expect from practice.) The muscle morphology is different from when I started rock climbing pre-T and got muscle growth. I'll try to explain by considering what my arm looks like in a stereotypical "flex a muscle" pose. Pre-T, when I started working out, I developed a narrow strip of bicep muscle that grew upwards from my arm in the indicated position, and it broadened with additional training. Now, I'm getting a broader area of growth, though not as much as when I was actully working out pre-T. My shoulders (by which I mean the corner where my arm meets my torso, not near the shoulder blades on my back nor the space between front and back of my torso) also appear more defined than before, without any action on my part.
Facial hair:
The almost white vellous hair on my chin, jaw, and sides of my face is getting longer. When I wake up, the hair on side of my face that was on the pillow really stands out in the light, and I can see a few hairs are much longer than the rest. I'm not sure if my back hair is following suit.
Acne:
It's still pretty bad. I'm using a topical antibiotic in the morning and tretinoin in the evening, and while it seems to be helping pimples come to a head, become poppable, and heal more quickly, I'm still getting loads of them on my chin and hairline, as well as down my neck, behind my ears, and on a patch in the middle of my chest. I have started applying the topical medications to my neck and ears even though those areas are a pain to wash twice daily. Oh, and of course, my bacne's gotten especially bold, and I'm beating it into submission by washing it with a 10% benzoyl peroxide daily, up from the 5% I still use on my face -- this is war! Not sure where to put this, but it's skin related, so it goes here: I have what has been at various times diagnosed as eczema and/or psoriasis, and the patches where it's active at the moment are feeling a lot less irritated and are peeling (dry skin comes off in one big scale-like mass) more rapidly, which is good!
Sex drive:
It's remained higher than normal but not really directed at anyone/anything. I wouldn't say it's out of control, but I'm masturbating about twice as often as I did immediately pre-T but not even half as often as I did when I wasn't swamped with work all the time. I am feeling more impulsive urges of a sexual nature, such as thoughts of sex with my friends. I don't find these thoughts especially disturbing, nor have I acted on any of them, but I would prefer if they were less persistent.
Emotions:
My ADHD is continuing to worsen in that I now have to take Adderall on weekends in order to catch up on work I failed to complete during the week and because I can't do basic things like get ready to leave the house without getting distracted and taking a lot more time than I've got to spend on it. I haven't decided whether my acoidance of work is really something I can blame on T or if it's still the result of severe burnout.
Downstairs:
It's still a little oversensitive much of the time. It's only really a problem when cleaning the lil' guy in the shower. Due to increased sex drive, I've been viewing more porn (all kinds), and my dick's definitely not as big as even the smallest I've seen in trans* dude porn, so I'm still going with negligible change.
Metabolism:
I'm just tired a lot of the time. I can resist the desire to nap and function just fine, but I'm craving more sleep. When left to my own devices, I'm happy to sleep for about 11 hours straight. I have been having trouble with snoozing my alarm for hours at a time and am not sure if it's because T is making me tired, T is making me not care, or it's unrelated (burnout again) and I shouldn't blame T at all.
Hair:
With respect to dryness and oiliness, it seems to have pretty much gone back to normal with minimal intervention. It now gets oily within about 48 hours of being washed (same as pre-T) and is no longer dry and straw-like even though I failed to actually start using conditioner.
Everything else:
I'm still being read very inconsistently and not really having a problem with it. What's really strange is how quickly I've gone from being read as male until I speak to being read as female until I speak. I'm really happy to be in this androgynous place now and unsure how to proceed with documentation changes because of that.
I've been using the AndroGel 1% metered pump, one 1.25 g pump daily. I finally got details on my levels from my endo -- pre-T 21 ng/dL and on-T 180 ng/dL. Both of these are lower than I expected given that 1) I've had some signs of high T levels for several years and 2) at the very least my voice has changed remarkably quickly given my low dose. In any case, I had to switch from applying the gel to my shoulders and upper back to my lower back and sides starting about five days ago. I got an enormous cyst on my upper back/shoulder and now believe that the gel is acting locally to some extent by exacerbating my already severe acne in that area. Hopefully my bacne will calm down now that I've changed application sites.
Cycle:
I got another period on T, this one as early and more painful as the last (22 days since the previous one and 33 days since starting T), but at least it was shorter and no heavier, a difference I credit to actually taking my iron supplement normally. I am not yet ready to increase my dose to combat this effect, but I am certainly considering it, especially if there's some middle ground between keeping it as it is and outright doubling it, since there's no metered dose between 1.25 g and 2.5 g. I know there's AndroGel 1.62%, and if the smallest metered dose on that is also 1.25 g, I might request that in the fall when I next see my endo. Sort of related, I experienced fluid retention with my period, which has happened a handful of times in my entire life. This is definitely the first time there's been evidence in my face, and it was a little alarming to see my face shape different from what I'm used to. Luckily it went away within 24 hours of when I noticed it. Weird!
Voice:
I had a cold for a week and am still suffering some effects when it comes to controlling the pitch and volume of my voice. Despite this, my partner and my best friend, after not seeing me for a week and a year respectively, noticed my voice had changed, but other friends I hadn't seen in a week, a month, and a year did not notice any difference. I am still read as female on the phone, but I'm read as male once I speak in meatspace if I'm using an indoor voice. I am still getting days when my throat feels swollen (and in a way that is different from when it's just postnasal drip from this cold), and I'm still keeping digital records -- it seems like it's really slowing down now, but that might be due to this cold affecting my ability to control my voice. While I'm at this plateau, I would really like to start practicing using my chest voice but am pretty confused about how to go about doing it.
Muscles:
I've started noticing growth on my upper arms and shoulders even though I haven't been doing any exercise beyond lazily trying to do pull-ups a couple times a week. (I can now do 6, up from 4 pre-T, so I wouldn't say I've gotten stronger beyond what one would expect from practice.) The muscle morphology is different from when I started rock climbing pre-T and got muscle growth. I'll try to explain by considering what my arm looks like in a stereotypical "flex a muscle" pose. Pre-T, when I started working out, I developed a narrow strip of bicep muscle that grew upwards from my arm in the indicated position, and it broadened with additional training. Now, I'm getting a broader area of growth, though not as much as when I was actully working out pre-T. My shoulders (by which I mean the corner where my arm meets my torso, not near the shoulder blades on my back nor the space between front and back of my torso) also appear more defined than before, without any action on my part.
Facial hair:
The almost white vellous hair on my chin, jaw, and sides of my face is getting longer. When I wake up, the hair on side of my face that was on the pillow really stands out in the light, and I can see a few hairs are much longer than the rest. I'm not sure if my back hair is following suit.
Acne:
It's still pretty bad. I'm using a topical antibiotic in the morning and tretinoin in the evening, and while it seems to be helping pimples come to a head, become poppable, and heal more quickly, I'm still getting loads of them on my chin and hairline, as well as down my neck, behind my ears, and on a patch in the middle of my chest. I have started applying the topical medications to my neck and ears even though those areas are a pain to wash twice daily. Oh, and of course, my bacne's gotten especially bold, and I'm beating it into submission by washing it with a 10% benzoyl peroxide daily, up from the 5% I still use on my face -- this is war! Not sure where to put this, but it's skin related, so it goes here: I have what has been at various times diagnosed as eczema and/or psoriasis, and the patches where it's active at the moment are feeling a lot less irritated and are peeling (dry skin comes off in one big scale-like mass) more rapidly, which is good!
Sex drive:
It's remained higher than normal but not really directed at anyone/anything. I wouldn't say it's out of control, but I'm masturbating about twice as often as I did immediately pre-T but not even half as often as I did when I wasn't swamped with work all the time. I am feeling more impulsive urges of a sexual nature, such as thoughts of sex with my friends. I don't find these thoughts especially disturbing, nor have I acted on any of them, but I would prefer if they were less persistent.
Emotions:
My ADHD is continuing to worsen in that I now have to take Adderall on weekends in order to catch up on work I failed to complete during the week and because I can't do basic things like get ready to leave the house without getting distracted and taking a lot more time than I've got to spend on it. I haven't decided whether my acoidance of work is really something I can blame on T or if it's still the result of severe burnout.
Downstairs:
It's still a little oversensitive much of the time. It's only really a problem when cleaning the lil' guy in the shower. Due to increased sex drive, I've been viewing more porn (all kinds), and my dick's definitely not as big as even the smallest I've seen in trans* dude porn, so I'm still going with negligible change.
Metabolism:
I'm just tired a lot of the time. I can resist the desire to nap and function just fine, but I'm craving more sleep. When left to my own devices, I'm happy to sleep for about 11 hours straight. I have been having trouble with snoozing my alarm for hours at a time and am not sure if it's because T is making me tired, T is making me not care, or it's unrelated (burnout again) and I shouldn't blame T at all.
Hair:
With respect to dryness and oiliness, it seems to have pretty much gone back to normal with minimal intervention. It now gets oily within about 48 hours of being washed (same as pre-T) and is no longer dry and straw-like even though I failed to actually start using conditioner.
Everything else:
I'm still being read very inconsistently and not really having a problem with it. What's really strange is how quickly I've gone from being read as male until I speak to being read as female until I speak. I'm really happy to be in this androgynous place now and unsure how to proceed with documentation changes because of that.
