T update: ten weeks
Jul. 16th, 2013 09:01 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aidenonymousFor reference, weeks eight, six, four, three, two, and one.
I've still been using the AndroGel 1% metered pump, one 1.25 g pump daily, applying a second dose if the first was compromised by heavy sweating within five hours of application. (This happened once in the past two weeks, and once in the two weeks before that, although both times I was also influenced by using T to directly combat social dysphoria, which I am aware is not a healthy thing at all.) I've been changing up my application site pretty randomly to avoid acne and mosquito bites, but it's all still on my back.
Scent:
I don't smell any different, at least not to humans, but mosquitos love me now. I've been effectively immune to mosquito bites since puberty 1.0 and have gotten more in the last two weeks than I got in the previous ten years total, no joke, and my exposure is the same as it was last summer. To be fair, I've only gotten about a dozen in this period, but it's still significant. Related change in blood chemistry: my bleeding disorder seems to be improving. Pre-T, I had very low blood pressure, which doctors determined was due to low blood volume, and I was diagnosed with a bleeding disorder because I bruise very easily and severely and take a very long time to clot in the sense that blood will continue slowly oozing out of any wound for hours. It actually didn't occur to me before that these two problems might share a cause, but now I'm pretty sure. Perhaps T has boosted my blood volume as I've heard sometimes happens, pushing my blood pressure up to the low end of the normal range. The higher pressure enables better blood flow to sites of injury, so platelets accumulate there more quickly, so no more enormous bruises from small bumps! Seriously, my bruises are healing on a visible timescale, which is very new, and all that extrapolation tempts me to start looking into top surgery even though I still have other reservations.
Chest:
My chest has definitely shrunken in volume, and my skin has adapted with it to some extent. Score! I still get down on myself for binding so much that I'll never again satisfy traditional beauty standards for women when it comes to my chest, but I'm more and more comfortable with it as it is, to the point that I actually wish I didn't have a roommate so I could lounge around without a shirt more; my chest dysphoria is, at this point, almost entirely socially motivated. However, I'm starting to seriously think about top surgery given the improvement of my bleeding disorder, and I think it's possible that I will be a candidate for peri, which would be nice in terms of scars. Obviously my concerns about sensation still need to be addressed. So, conflicted feelings, check.
Facial hair:
The vellous hair on the lower half of my face is getting longer and longer, and my sideburns wannabes are getting darker. It's not so noticeable that I'd have to shave to pass as female, but it's getting there faster than I expected. While I see myself with facial hair in the distant future and consciously want it, accepting potentially years of awkward not-there-yet facial hair maintenance (lasting possibly the rest of my life if I do ever stop T) is making me anxious -- this conflict over permanent effects of physical transition mirrors my mixed feelings about my chest, and I think I may need to take some time off T to sort it out.
Cycle:
I got a third period on T, this time when it would have been expected based on my pre-T cycle length. I did experience PMS symptoms the week before, which was frightening because the worst I ever got before T was a slight tendency toward crying during movies. This time, I was mopping up tears while watching Avatar at home, whereas I found it very easy to emotionally detach myself from the film's so-so dialoge and cliche storyline when I saw it in theaters years ago. In any case, this period was shorter than the last two with more manageable cramps, although my menstrual cup did fail me when I needed it most, so I'm not really sure how heavy it was.
Emotions:
On top of the possible PMS, I'm still getting some symptoms of depression despite not feeling consciously depressed. I don't know if it's because I have a lot of work hanging over my head or if it's the T, and I'm not sure I have any way to figure it out, or if it even matters because I'm not willing to stop T any time soon because the changes in my body image are good for my mental health. I am feeling really, really isolated and alone, so it could be loneliness looking like depression.
Sex drive:
Still pretty high, possibly higher than at the last update. I'm getting into using a prosthetic again, which is good. I took a break for a year because I feared I would become dependent on it and feel even worse about my plumbing without it, but now my sex drive is high enough that I know I can (and do, since I have the option) get off with or without the prosthetic.
Metabolism:
My heat tolerance has demonstrated a marked increase. When I'm hot, I actually sweat enough for evaporation to cool my body. Crazy! As a result, I have more endurance than the other guys I work out with when it's really hot.
Voice:
When I speak, I'm usually making sounds from a range overlapping the deep end of a regular speaking voice range as well as that resonant near-growl (which I fondly call my subvocal processor), and that regular speaking range is getting lower and lower. I can also access more of that resonant gravely voice when I'm really relaxed, like when I'm tired at the end of a long day or if I'm drinking, and it sounds a lot less gravely if more air is flowing through my voice box. Due to worsening voice control, however, I can't seem to capture that phenomenon on my daily recordings, and it's easiest to access when I'm not binding.
Skin:
That gigantic cyst on my back is finally healing! Actually, my bacne is looking really good, and I haven't done much of anything to make it that way. My face is pretty well-behaved, too, aside from my chin. Even the sides of my jaw have cleared up a lot. The only place that's getting worse is my shoulders (not the parts on my back, the corners that attach to my arms), with little clusters of small pimples, not even whiteheads, and I'll be keeping an eye on it. Also relevant to skin, my scalp has become much less sensitive to shampoo. I used to have to use shampoo for sensitive scalps, and even then I'd get insane dandruff. It was bad enough that I went "no poo" for a while. Now I don't have serious problems when I use whatever other shampoo might be lying around, nor do I absolutely need the anti-dandruff shampoo whenever I wash my hair.
Muscles:
My biceps are getting beefier by the week, with no effort on my part. This is kinda cool and makes me wish I had time to work out so I could really take advantage of it.
Body hair:
I'm not entirely certain, but I think my legs may have gotten hairier. The hair has always been long but seems longer now, and I'm seeing more that are coarse or wiry. I want to say it's denser on the backs of my calves, too, but I didn't pay too much attention before. I've still got nothing on my thighs and not much on my inner upper calves.
Everything else:
I'm getting misgendered a lot and don't know if it's because I'm spending more time with my cis male partner in a conservative area where I am assumed to be female by association with a male, because my voice really is that feminine, because my chest is still too big to slack on binding by wearing a sportster, and/or something else entirely. Also, I've been kinda dysphoric about hips, which is unusual for me because I'm aware that they're not actually big. Sometimes I imagine that body fat migration has kicked in and my waist-to-hip ratio is increasing, but I haven't measured, so I can't report anything, and frankly I'm on an insufficiently high dose for an insufficient amount of time for that anyway.
I've still been using the AndroGel 1% metered pump, one 1.25 g pump daily, applying a second dose if the first was compromised by heavy sweating within five hours of application. (This happened once in the past two weeks, and once in the two weeks before that, although both times I was also influenced by using T to directly combat social dysphoria, which I am aware is not a healthy thing at all.) I've been changing up my application site pretty randomly to avoid acne and mosquito bites, but it's all still on my back.
Scent:
I don't smell any different, at least not to humans, but mosquitos love me now. I've been effectively immune to mosquito bites since puberty 1.0 and have gotten more in the last two weeks than I got in the previous ten years total, no joke, and my exposure is the same as it was last summer. To be fair, I've only gotten about a dozen in this period, but it's still significant. Related change in blood chemistry: my bleeding disorder seems to be improving. Pre-T, I had very low blood pressure, which doctors determined was due to low blood volume, and I was diagnosed with a bleeding disorder because I bruise very easily and severely and take a very long time to clot in the sense that blood will continue slowly oozing out of any wound for hours. It actually didn't occur to me before that these two problems might share a cause, but now I'm pretty sure. Perhaps T has boosted my blood volume as I've heard sometimes happens, pushing my blood pressure up to the low end of the normal range. The higher pressure enables better blood flow to sites of injury, so platelets accumulate there more quickly, so no more enormous bruises from small bumps! Seriously, my bruises are healing on a visible timescale, which is very new, and all that extrapolation tempts me to start looking into top surgery even though I still have other reservations.
Chest:
My chest has definitely shrunken in volume, and my skin has adapted with it to some extent. Score! I still get down on myself for binding so much that I'll never again satisfy traditional beauty standards for women when it comes to my chest, but I'm more and more comfortable with it as it is, to the point that I actually wish I didn't have a roommate so I could lounge around without a shirt more; my chest dysphoria is, at this point, almost entirely socially motivated. However, I'm starting to seriously think about top surgery given the improvement of my bleeding disorder, and I think it's possible that I will be a candidate for peri, which would be nice in terms of scars. Obviously my concerns about sensation still need to be addressed. So, conflicted feelings, check.
Facial hair:
The vellous hair on the lower half of my face is getting longer and longer, and my sideburns wannabes are getting darker. It's not so noticeable that I'd have to shave to pass as female, but it's getting there faster than I expected. While I see myself with facial hair in the distant future and consciously want it, accepting potentially years of awkward not-there-yet facial hair maintenance (lasting possibly the rest of my life if I do ever stop T) is making me anxious -- this conflict over permanent effects of physical transition mirrors my mixed feelings about my chest, and I think I may need to take some time off T to sort it out.
Cycle:
I got a third period on T, this time when it would have been expected based on my pre-T cycle length. I did experience PMS symptoms the week before, which was frightening because the worst I ever got before T was a slight tendency toward crying during movies. This time, I was mopping up tears while watching Avatar at home, whereas I found it very easy to emotionally detach myself from the film's so-so dialoge and cliche storyline when I saw it in theaters years ago. In any case, this period was shorter than the last two with more manageable cramps, although my menstrual cup did fail me when I needed it most, so I'm not really sure how heavy it was.
Emotions:
On top of the possible PMS, I'm still getting some symptoms of depression despite not feeling consciously depressed. I don't know if it's because I have a lot of work hanging over my head or if it's the T, and I'm not sure I have any way to figure it out, or if it even matters because I'm not willing to stop T any time soon because the changes in my body image are good for my mental health. I am feeling really, really isolated and alone, so it could be loneliness looking like depression.
Sex drive:
Still pretty high, possibly higher than at the last update. I'm getting into using a prosthetic again, which is good. I took a break for a year because I feared I would become dependent on it and feel even worse about my plumbing without it, but now my sex drive is high enough that I know I can (and do, since I have the option) get off with or without the prosthetic.
Metabolism:
My heat tolerance has demonstrated a marked increase. When I'm hot, I actually sweat enough for evaporation to cool my body. Crazy! As a result, I have more endurance than the other guys I work out with when it's really hot.
Voice:
When I speak, I'm usually making sounds from a range overlapping the deep end of a regular speaking voice range as well as that resonant near-growl (which I fondly call my subvocal processor), and that regular speaking range is getting lower and lower. I can also access more of that resonant gravely voice when I'm really relaxed, like when I'm tired at the end of a long day or if I'm drinking, and it sounds a lot less gravely if more air is flowing through my voice box. Due to worsening voice control, however, I can't seem to capture that phenomenon on my daily recordings, and it's easiest to access when I'm not binding.
Skin:
That gigantic cyst on my back is finally healing! Actually, my bacne is looking really good, and I haven't done much of anything to make it that way. My face is pretty well-behaved, too, aside from my chin. Even the sides of my jaw have cleared up a lot. The only place that's getting worse is my shoulders (not the parts on my back, the corners that attach to my arms), with little clusters of small pimples, not even whiteheads, and I'll be keeping an eye on it. Also relevant to skin, my scalp has become much less sensitive to shampoo. I used to have to use shampoo for sensitive scalps, and even then I'd get insane dandruff. It was bad enough that I went "no poo" for a while. Now I don't have serious problems when I use whatever other shampoo might be lying around, nor do I absolutely need the anti-dandruff shampoo whenever I wash my hair.
Muscles:
My biceps are getting beefier by the week, with no effort on my part. This is kinda cool and makes me wish I had time to work out so I could really take advantage of it.
Body hair:
I'm not entirely certain, but I think my legs may have gotten hairier. The hair has always been long but seems longer now, and I'm seeing more that are coarse or wiry. I want to say it's denser on the backs of my calves, too, but I didn't pay too much attention before. I've still got nothing on my thighs and not much on my inner upper calves.
Everything else:
I'm getting misgendered a lot and don't know if it's because I'm spending more time with my cis male partner in a conservative area where I am assumed to be female by association with a male, because my voice really is that feminine, because my chest is still too big to slack on binding by wearing a sportster, and/or something else entirely. Also, I've been kinda dysphoric about hips, which is unusual for me because I'm aware that they're not actually big. Sometimes I imagine that body fat migration has kicked in and my waist-to-hip ratio is increasing, but I haven't measured, so I can't report anything, and frankly I'm on an insufficiently high dose for an insufficient amount of time for that anyway.
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Facial hair and Periods
Date: 2013-07-25 08:03 am (UTC)On periods, I have a friends who's on the T gel and also uses a certain brand of 'the pill' to manage their monthly cycle - is this a possibility for you?
Re: Facial hair and Periods
Date: 2013-07-31 02:17 am (UTC)Re: facial hair, I know I can get rid of it, temporarily or permanently, if I feel like it, but I don't like having to do much of anything to maintain my appearance -- oddly enough, I feel like a part of my non-binary gender identity is "lazy." Trimming instead of shaving seems like a good compromise I'll probably take advantage of when the time comes. Thanks for the idea!
Re: periods, I'm not considering adding more hormones to the mix. It's a good idea, but I have too many hang-ups about it. On the logical side, I'd be concerned about mood swings and breast growth; on the irrational side, I'm just plain afraid of adding female hormones to my system even if they disable my ovaries. It was a pretty big deal for me to consider T at all because I've never taken hormones before for anything, and I've just barely gotten used to T at this point. I guess routine is more comfortable than risking another venture into the unknown when it comes to my downstairs mix-up. /-: