Hormones update…

 

If you're baking a cake and the instructions say, "Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes," and you bake that cake for 10 minutes at 570 degrees, that will not bake the cake faster or any better, just bad things happen to the cake.

I am feeling different after two weeks of hormones though – it took me a week or so to figure out that what I was feeling different about. After my first doses of hormones my depression, which I have lived with for quite a while had faded to the point that I no longer take pill for it.

 I feel like my whole emotional range has shifted towards the positive, I still get depressed from time to time like every other person, but it’s no longer my de facto state. While the hormones prescribed, do take a while, to make changes to the transgender brain they actually do rewire the brain to female. These hormones take away the noise or chatter in the brain of a person who is transgender (MtF) 

Contrary to popular belief, hormones do NOT change sexual orientation. Sexual orientation is very different to gender, like chalk and cheese.

I guess if they did they would have be using them to "cure" gay people in the 40’s and 50’s.

For transsexual people hormones correct a life-long hormonal imbalance they've lived with day in day out, now I have started estrogen the constant "noise" in my head stopped and I started to feel mentally whole for the first time since I was a child.
With my coming out as a transwoman and transitioning*, I have also been freed of constantly monitoring my own behaviour and mannerism’s all the time, which is a great weight of my mind and shoulders.

I have now let my barriers and my defensive wall fall down, I’m still walking in the rubble of that mental wall, finding my way to being the real me everything feels so natural I don’t have to think about appearing female I’m just me, people have commented on how womanly I am and how the heck did I pull off being male for so long.

 *Transitioning is a long, expensive, medically monitored process that takes years to accomplish it is not an overnight process. Cis girls enter puberty and take anywhere from five to seven years to go through this process, it’s no difference for the transgender female taking hormones to accomplish this.

Update 13 Feb 2016

 

Well HRT is not a magical cure-all that will change your body overnight. 

 As I said in the blog heading for this page If you're baking a cake and the instructions say, "Bake at 425 degrees for 20 minutes," and you bake that cake for 10 minutes at 550 degrees, that will not bake the cake faster and bad things will happen. This is also true when taking any kind of hormone. You don't always need the maximum dose and you certainly should not up your doses unless your doctor tells you to.

Going on HRT may not solve all the problems in your life, but it can help. 

 

People who transition do so in order to cement the gender identity they have. Some trans people think all their life's difficulties only stem from the fact that their body does not align with their gender.

But HRT is not the end-all and be-all solution to a person's life problems. Like everyone else, transgender people don't only deal with gender issues, but also racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ableism, etc. In the end, a person's gender is more than just pronouns and preference, it is a process.

I have been warned that when you are taking testosterone blockers and estrogen, you may experience severe mood swings, but it is hard to know what will happen until you go through it... 

Update March 2016…

I have been on the hormone tablets (estrogen) for 3 months now and things are really happening to my body. But the noticeable changes started to happen once I received my testosterone blocker – Prostap SR, it is technically called Leuprorelin acetate. I have 3.75mg of this injected into my body monthly by the Nurse at my Doctor’s surgery, these intramuscular injections are due to increase in size but will be injected every 3 months rather than monthly which will be better as I don’t like needles being jabbed in me.

I have noticed the tablets and the injection have been causing me to nibble on some food snack at various times of the day and night. So losing weight will be a more difficult thing for me than in the past, so I guess I will have to be more disciplined and perhaps obsessive about my diet, and of course exercise. I have to ensure my body mass index is well below 30, which is what the clinic has asked me to achieve. I was below 30 (just) before the hormone therapy started so I will just have to monitor how I get on from week to week.

Mood wise I feel so much together than before, the battle in my mind/body is changing and I feel more at one than I expected to feel after just 3 months on treatment. My chest is changing (sore nipple area) body fat and facial changes are all noticeable, my head hair looks better but I cannot see a change in body hair just yet, everybody reacts in a different manner to the treatment so there are no real stages that happen on certain days. You cannot say on day 41 you will notice this or that… but a more general “some people have said” sort of thing, as far as I can see I am progressing along the care pathway OK and at a good speed. The Consultant at the GIC will tell me more in April, which is when my next appointment is booked for, after that appointment they should fall every 3 to 4 months apart.

 

I have noticed the body changes appear to come visible in waves… you carry on your normal daily routines and nothing then a few day later Bam! You notice something then nothing for a while then Bam! Someone tells you something about you has changed then nothing for a while the Bam! Again it certainly keeps you going through the changes your body is undertaking, I have learned to wait and see what the next thing to start or change is. If I see no change for a while I don’t worry I just think I must be quite a change that’s happening if I haven’t noticed anything just yet, to my surprise someone will undoubtable tell me something, about me that I hadn’t noticed. I guess a watched pot never boils over…