Endocrinology

Yesterday was my very first endocrinology appointment, my therapist had sent the abbreviated version of my story/situation so she knew the long and short of it, but she also wanted to hear it from me.

For those of you who don't know, endocrinology is the study of the endocrine glands and pretty much everything that has to do with hormones.  So for someone like myself it is very important to find an endocrinologist who has experience and is very personable.  I am very happy and lucky to say that my endocrinologist not only is very personable, she has lots of experience with FtMs as well as MtFs, she greatly dislikes insurance companies, she wants the best for her patients and she also describes the biology of it in a very easy to understand manner.

Anyway, we went through my options...the first option is a drug that basically just shuts down the messages from the pituitary gland sending waves of estrogen and/or testosterone however that is a very expensive form of treatment pretty much reserved for millionaires or people who don't have to worry about their finances.  Not being either we talked about testosterone the hormone itself.  There are three ways to get it (at least from my hospital) and that is gel, patch or injection.  The gel and patch options are more expensive while the injections are the most cost effective.  With the gel you also run the risk of it not quite getting into your system, but we both decided that injection would be the best option for me.

When my first injection occurs I will be taught how to do them myself which means that I won't have to go to the doctor's office every two to three weeks (initially how we are starting my injection schedule) or even possible once every week (which would be a lower dosage just more often).  In the mean time she had me get some blood work done (mostly just testing my cholesterol and lipid profile because testosterone can greatly effect both of those things) and if all goes well with the results I will be able to start taking T in the next week or two!