Tag: HRT

sargat

I’m on the second day of the high-progesterone cycle. And sure, I cannot tell if this is biology or placebo. But I feel like I did in that previous 14 day cycle and it contrasts a lot to the 14 day cycle with estrogen only. I should work and shower and go to my meeting, I will do that, but need to describe this.

It’s both scary and interesting and useful. I am not detached but I am relaxed, laid back. There is less urgency, more acceptance in the face of anything. I feel a little tired, a little slow, not apathetic, but slow. I am not sure if I am, and I suspect it simply is me feeling how tired I really am and have been for a long time. It’s like it shuts off my fear/anxiety driven overdrive mechanism.

That’s scary because I have use for that overdrive as an overachiever. Possibly I can stay equally productive if I ensure enough rest, self-care, work-life balance. But I do feel that since I am less afraid, I am also less energetic. I’ll work that out.

I don’t feel detached, per se, emotions are not less, I am not dissociated. But there is also an… otherness to my emotions. It’s like when I woke up after long sleep and wondered who I was. I feel like myself but I don’t know if it is the same myself as off progesterone? Of course I am the same, I love you all the same and want the same. But on some odd level I don’t have words to describe I also know I am somehow emotionally different than otherwise. It may be I am closer to my body somehow. Like I have greater emotional inertia?

I mostly like this. I’ll learn to modulate it and to understand it better.

queendom come

Very speculative with no basis anywhere, but feelings need describing whether they have statistical significance or not.

If being completely speculative and anecdatal – which we totally do when we feel like, I’d describe this state of effectively mid-late faux-luteal phase as involving:

– Bloating (probably coincidence), feeling pressing need to urinate more often

– Feeling of tingly sleepy heat of peripheral blood vessels, like after being cold (this is a vasoconstriction thing somehow? makes me somehow think of cortisol)

– Emotional salience. Feeling close to affect, easily moved, easily anxious.

– But not active or vigilant, rather tired and non-urgent, staying at rest.

I feel very small and connnected to the world. My colour is more burgundy than purple, perhaps.

I wonder about this. If it really is there, it should persist until I go into faux-follicular phase on Monday. At which point I should experience clarity, wakefulness, vigilance, reactivity, urgency.

Wondering about the cortisol. Does that cycle in cis women, all else equal?

prog rox

Nipples are sensitive today like they haven’t been since early on estrogen. This is another kind of sensitivity than the pressure-in-mound type of the months before. Dare I hope this means progesterone now makes me start evolving Tanner IV breasts? I do hope that. Hoping very much the nipples themselves will grow larger and fuller as this is something I feel self-conscious of when being intimate with cis girls, and that sort of gets to me.

weight

So, I seem to be in one of those modes/moods where things seem difficult and heavy and scary. It also makes me more dysphoric (“what if I was just fooled into wanting to be an anime character like Blanchard says?”) and prone to worry for practical matter (“how will I charge my phone if…”). It’s not quite the same as the PMS modes because things don’t feel tiring in the same way and I don’t feel angry, I just seem to have fear amplified. I do believe it was like this first day of Lenzetto spray, and it seemed like this on low dosages (whereas the PMS state emerged on high dosage at some point). And I just changed estrogen dosing scheme and added progesterone. So possibly there are at least two components to modes of this type and they may reflect either doses being too low (worry) or fluctuating/high (irritability/thin-skinned-ness/weariness). Well, we’ll see. I continue to observe.

moon mask merge

So what happens? My partner (once more in some form) said my face has femininized. I had more moments of not being able to let go of an emotional surge once it started, just deciding what to do with it. Touch feels good.

Got gel estrogen and progesterone prescribed, so will start a cycle now. I wonder if I will experience something.

Also second hand shopping, got some skirts and a jacket for experimenting with business chick looks, curious if I will feel OK with that or not.

EDIT: Oh, and asked my endocrinologist on the possibility of collaborating on clinical studies. He was open in principle and seemed surprised. Continuing to represent!

oxytocodein

CW lots, NSFW and if you don’t want the dirt on my life, better not read; this one likely will be censored if ever this blog gets connected to my real name

Lots of things happening, mostly good. Work stress from windows of opportunity that opened still looms large but for good or ill I am trying to not let it edge out all social life. So went to check out new club friends are setting up, then on Sunday joined up with said people to go dance during day 2 of a big gay rave. Continued to program on the train to there. This is my life now? I seem to be becoming exactly who I’d dreamed to be, with all the upsides and downsides thereof.

Second party day was interesting. Clocked by drag queens who complimented me, felt OK but not connected. Gave out my business card to a woman in the darkroom, and to the woman manning the door. Dancing was great, thought I saw Asbjørn by the DJ booth, had some guy dancing very physically with me. I realized after a while I wasn’t so comfortable with that, and had an interesting exercise pushing him away subtly, though it was only when I gave clear hand signals he desisted. Felt like another rite of passage.

My companions offered various drugs, weed and ecstasy and speed. Partook of some of each, but small amounts as I couldn’t know how they would affect me; tried only the former before. Neither of the latter really felt much, or gave much beyond the venue itself. May be more on higher doses, which seems inadvisable. Not same coziness as from MDMA, which I definitely should be careful with. I think there was a slightly higher longing-to-be-hugged within one hour, and a tendency to talk a lot and be social within three, and then a tendency to shiver after six or nine. The only E I would want to use habitually would be estradiol, though. Picked up my new patch scripts for that today.

Drugs aside, the party was nice. I mostly spent time with a friend who is also trans. We watched the men in the darkroom basically just go full on sex without much context or communication (though clearly always with consent and hopefully condoms) and were uncertain on what the codes for that actually are. Later that evening we ended up making out, which I had not expected or planned for at all, but found delightful; there may be a scent dimension I had missed beyond “smelling sexy” // “not smelling sexy” which is “tasting good” // “tasting distracting”. Slowly observing increased granularity of this. My friend tasted good, and we ended up at her place spending the rest of the night touching and kissing.

This is the first time I am intimate with another trans woman after starting transition myself, and it was a very powerful and liberating experience I hope we will repeat (having a bundle of unspecific emotions that will be happily sorted out later). Recognizing how I cannot parse the sense of her as anything but female, and receiving the same in return, helps me stay hopeful that my efforts are working, and I found that circumstances of mutual dysphoria made it a little easier to be seen in my pre-op state. Also recognizing I’m not really functioning like I want to. Curious on what adding progesteron might do, and if I need to relearn how to climax at this point; experiments with high-end vibrators upcoming when there’ll be time.

Noticing also, in link with the darkroom exchanges, the dance floor exchanges and so forth: sudden intimacy with a stranger might not scare me but it feels dissociated and dispassionate. I recognize this largely is a stereotyped social construct, but I think that with reduced libido I may not be able to get in the mood without some form of relational buildup and activation. Essentially feeling what may be typical of lesbian vs gay male club hookups. More data needed. All in all, happily recognizing that my casual encounters might have to build on serious friendships and that I can’t go from 0 to full libidinality without buildup. I hadn’t recognized what the latter feels like. Essentially, sexual dimensions seem empty and boring until they have been contextualized enough?

further c-c-c-changes

I weigh more than I want and was thinking. Need to take this seriously because of the way it intersects with dysphoria and body remodeling, and with preparations for future surgery (I think I can say now I want it. I think I am still sure I want to do it with Chettawut). It will happen. Just gets complicated because at this point, I’m finding that I get slightly more tired in the evenings than I would need to be for the work I want to do if I fast. Maybe it is time to look into other dietary strategies. I’ll try synbiotic supplements again for all we see from metagenomics point to it helping.

More interesting, bra shoulder straps have kept slipping down over shoulders for some time. Assumed they had stretched/expanded and today set out to adjust. But they were almost as tight as they could. Then removed the band extender, as bra generally felt loose. Fit much better. Of course, it probably did stretch some. But what I also must conclude is that my band size has decreased, my shoulders have slimmed, enough to change clothes fit. While even gaining weight. My anatomy is changing and I look at this fact with the same reverence as I would look at my baby.

Oh, and another thing I forgot too. Going by smell, I can wear dresses for several more days than I could a few months ago. My sweat may have changed further, I don’t actually sense it myself.

We move.

naz

So, I actually believe my nose hair is growing slower. More time elapses between consecutive occasions of me noticing it and thus plucking it. Body hair in general seems to grow back largely as vellus after I epilate, and from what I can tell, it does so slower. I have barely any beard shadow at all, though still stubble I can feel, for more lasering. I’m having less of that awful, horrible hair and it makes me incredibly happy. It really does feel like some threshold was reached at around M6-M7 of HRT in this regard. Might be enough hair cycles were affected. Still needing to maintain, but my skin really is that of a 37yo woman rather than a 37yo man. Which it should be. I am thankful to its causality.

tension

I took extra estradiol today in case patch was running thin, so I am not low. But I am in a reactivity state that matches descriptions of PMS. The stresses yesterday, who knows how they contributed, or the shift to autumn, or sleep deprivation? Who knows if this is random or nocebo? I just know that I’m extremely easily frustrated, despairing (not actually! Just feeling like I do, and moaning and groaning), crying, very easily irritated, short fuse, easily saddened, yesterday and today. Low on containment ability, and high persistence of affect. A little bloated as well. Dark chocolate craved and helping. What a cliché. Never mind etiology, this is how I feel today.

*

Marking this point. Should the same return later, that yields more data.