Today is Friday, the day I give myself a tiny injection of testosterone. I’ve been looking forward to this since Wednesday or so. This was my fifth week injecting myself. I don’t mind needles and so the idea of injecting myself wasn’t scary to me. I’ve had no trouble with it, especially because my doctor’s office has packets of supplies like needles, syringes, alcohol wipes, and bandaids. They also had one of the nurses sit down with me and train me on what exactly I needed to do. It was a good experience. She answered all of my questions before I had to ask them with the training she provided. It was very thorough.
The experience ceased to be good about an hour after the appointment when I was notified by my pharmacy that I would need insurance preapproval before they could fill the prescription. I already waited a month for the appointment, and now I had to wait a little longer to get the prescription. I’ve never had to get prior authorization on a prescription before so I was clueless what would happen. I messaged my doctor’s office through mychart and heard nothing that Thursday. In the late afternoon on Friday, I finally heard from the office that it was approved and I was good to go. I wasn’t sure if the doctor’s office would let the pharmacy know or if I needed to call myself. Finally, later that afternoon, I got the word that I needed to call. I did and within a couple of hours my prescription was ready.
I picked it up and took the first shot later on that evening. It was crazy how quickly I felt better once I had that first injection. It was better than taking an ativan for calming me internally. I suddenly could control my ADHD impulses, particularly around food. I didn’t feel like eating all the time and my focus on what I am working on seems to be almost normal. My psychiatric nurse practitioner said that adderall may not work as well with testosterone in the mix but I am finding that to be exactly opposite.
The amount that the doctor and I agreed to start with is less than half of the usual dose people take. He said he can’t really say what will happen at such a small dosage but he said all the drawbacks of testosterone also likely wouldn’t be a problem. I haven’t seen any physical changes at this point other than my voice seems deeper. It’s also randomly come out higher than I intended a couple times. While I’ve been singing, I’ve found that I can’t sing as high as I used to be able to and when I do go high, it sounds more falsetto and less like it’s just my voice at the higher range. That sounds weird because falsetto is a natural part of the voice but it just doesn’t sound the same as it used to. My wife has also mentioned that my voice seems deeper as well. Since that’s one of the main changes that I’d like to see, I’m excited that it seems to be changing quickly and as the first big change.
For me, one of the things that I do not want to experience is hair loss. I’ve always had really thick hair. The fade haircut that I get now is awesome for my hair. It’s well trained to just do what I want it to do. I want to keep all my hair if at all possible. There’s been a couple of times that the shower drain seemed to have more hair than I would like to be losing, but then the next shower I wouldn’t have any hair in the drain.
It honestly feels like my body has been missing testosterone all this time. I wonder if it was really low and I am slowly making up for what I’ve been supposed to have all this time. I feel much more steady emotionally and like I am more in control of my emotions in a good way. I feel so much less erratic and I am really happy about that.
I have an appointment with my doctor in about two weeks to talk about how it’s going and I am actually excited to tell him how much better I feel and to discuss why I am not experiencing anything negative, why my ADHD and anxiety are actually better, and why I feel less cranky and more happy. Testosterone has made me feel so much better and more confident. Even if I was already low and this isn’t doing anything to push me in a more masculine direction, this has been a huge life-changer for me.
This is why gender affirming care is so important and a decision that can only be made between a patient and doctor, or patient, parent, and doctor. Unless you actually are experiencing gender dysphoria or are very close to someone who is dealing with it, you cannot possibly understand how it feels to live with it. You cannot imagine the way it drags you down and the energy you must invest to fake your way through life or fit in the way you think you should. I’ve known how I felt inside since I was four years old. I have lived an amazing life and had so many opportunities for success, friendship, and I actually found true love. I wouldn’t trade that for anything. If a genie appeared and I could wish for gender affirming care as a child and I could’ve lived as a man all this time, I would not change a thing. I would live my life this way over and over, if I knew it was going to turn out like this. But at the same time, I can only imagine how much better life could’ve been if gender affirming care had been an option for me as a child. For anyone to say that this is about grooming, pedophilia, or taking away sports opportunities from girls and women just shows me how truly ignorant someone is. I would not wish this on anyone, but since there is a small percentage of people who are actually suffering through this, there needs to be treatment options that are made between doctors and patients, with parents as needed. It’s not a legislative issue.
There is no need to protect children. I knew from a very young age that I was a boy and no one would listen to me. Everyone argued with me. There was absolutely no one grooming me, I wasn’t reading anything at any time that led me down this path because there wasn’t anything I could read, and I just could not find the right words to describe how much pain I felt internally, especially once puberty started. I can only imagine how much less pain I would’ve felt if I did have a book to help me find the right words to tell adults around me what I felt. Perhaps my mental health would not have been destroyed by the time I was 14 years old. Perhaps I would’ve been much happier and confident my entire life. I spent a lot of years hurting myself and wishing I was dead.
Not anymore. If you don’t personally know anyone struggling with gender dysphoria, don’t assume that it’s “just a mental illness” or some kind of parenting issue or parents pushing an agenda. All my parents ever wanted me to be was a perfect little feminine girl and they pushed that on me over and over and it never stuck because that’s not who I am or who I ever was. I wish it was something easily curable. I wish it hadn’t controlled my entire life. I wish it was just simply a mental health issue that could’ve been cured.
I really appreciate all of you and the support you’ve given me on my blog. I’m not interested in being an out advocate, even though maybe we need more people like me to stop living my best life quietly and start living out loud. I do enjoy sharing my thoughts here and hopefully I can win a few people over with my very raw experiences and painful memories. Thank you for taking the time to read my blog over these last almost two years.
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