42 • TRANSGENDER HORMONE THERAPY (MTF) APPOINTMENT 2

Future me here *waves* so this was only the second diary entry from my Doctors Appointments for Transgender Hormone Therapy that I shared online, and as I said in the first one, my journey with hormones was so stressful at times, maybe I found it too painful to share the rest?

But it’s now 2021, and something I do want to share is what happened in April 2017.

Just before my Birthday, I took all my Spiro hormone pills and threw them off a bridge, into the river. Sounds mad don’t it, but it worked. What had happened was, my mind was becoming more and more of a control freak, and had me switching hormones nearly every month throughout 2016 and 2017, trying to be control of the results.

These Spiro pills were seven months worth of supplies I still had from self medicating, and I was scared to let them go, but physically throwing them into the river, watching them all separate and drift out of my life forever, was one of the most liberating experiences ever. They even let me take some photos as they made their final journey :)

*end of future me*

Blimey. Made it. That could be taken one of two ways. Either, made it to the train station on time today, or, made it to today without killing myself. Either way, I’m relieved. It’s been three months since my first Doctors Appointment at the Gender Clinic for Transgender Hormone Therapy. I’ve changed my hormones from patches to gel, cut my Finasteride into quarters, and experienced the worse suicidal feelings I’ve ever had in my life, after the GP messed up my prescription. It hasn’t been the best few months, yet strangely, I’m starting to feel like my old self again.

Not my old old self, but my new old self, the one that I like. I feel content and excited. The reason. I’ve made up my mind as to what I’m doing moving forward. For six months I’ve given control over to the Doctors and changed hormones multiple times and watched my body go backwards. I could put up with that to some degree, as I have faith it will all come together. What I can’t accept, is my mind going backwards. The suicidal thoughts, feelings and acting out are too much. I can surrender control to the Universe, but it has to be a two way relationship.

The final straw really was last week. I got my blood results back, first since switching to the gel, and my Estrogen had dropped by over 50%. It’s only just in the female range now, right at the bottom. I could tell too. My breasts had lost that sensitive sensation, body hair had worsened and I didn’t feel right. Seeing those numbers, mixed in with my depression at the time, it sort of allowed me to let go. To hell with it I thought, I’m going back to the pills, even if it kills me. Six months since changing and I’ve continued to go backwards. At what point do you have to start having a bit of control?

Now, is the answer for me.

I’m seeing the Doctor today and I’m a bit nervous. Nervous as I need to be self assertive and say what I want. Stand up for myself. I want to return to Spiro, and I want to return to the estrogen pills. They both worked for me, so if I know it works, why am I going round in circles trying everything else? Seems ludicrous. I believe the Doctor will accept my request for estrogen pills, but the Spiro … I’m not so sure. He considers them dangerous. I have seven months supple at home from when I was self medicating, so that is an option should he say no, but, trust is so important in a relationship. I think breaking the trust between me and the Doctor, by self medicating, would be worse than not returning to Spiro. I would tell him first, tell him I’m going back to Spiro if I did, but even so, it wouldn’t feel right. I want to return to Spiro with the Doctors support.

It’s a difficult one. It’s hard for me to understand if wanting to go back to Spiro is a control thing or not. Same with the estrogen pills too. Is it a mind thing? Are they really better? I had positive results with them, so they must be, but than it could all be mental. At some level, I just want to go back to them to try and get some stability back in my life. They may be medically more dangerous, but I would argue that taking all these other ‘safer’ drugs has resulted in my mind going to a dangerously risky place. This transition is highlighting how much of a body / mind balance it all is. So, I go into today’s appointment nervous, but excited. Can I be self assertive?

I DON’T KNOW WHAT TO DO NOW

Positives first, at one point he said “Well, you certainly asserted yourself today Sophie.” That was amazing, because being self assertive doesn’t come naturally to me, and it was something I wanted before the session, so if nothing else, at least I’m evolving in the right direction :) I feel I was interrupting him a lot today, that’s not nice, but I guess it highlights how determined I was to stand up for what I wanted. He also apologised for messing up my Finasteride prescription last time, that’s actually what triggered the suicidal thoughts; The GP cancelled my Finasteride based off his letter, something we didn’t agree on, and for some reason it just sent me into a suicidal state. I guess I felt out of control.

I didn’t just show assertiveness to my Doctor about wanting to return to the estrogen pills either. There had been a lady sitting in with us the whole time, which I agreed to beforehand. After the Doctor appointment I returned to the waiting room to see my gender therapist for our next visit. At this point, I was feeling really helpless, and could sense I was close to bursting into tears. Just before my therapist showed up, this lady from earlier came in and sat opposite, she asked how I thought it went. I said I feel depressed and she said something to which I responded, “I don’t care anymore.”

At that point, my therapist came over, smiling as always :) asking if it would be alright for this lady to sit in on our session. Normally, I would have said yeah, old me, even in this crazy state of mind, wouldn’t have had the balls to say no. Today, things were different, I said, very politely, can we have a bit of time on our own please? My therapist said sure, and asked the lady to leave. I felt a little bit bad, but honestly, I could feel it wouldn’t have been wise for her to sit with us, in fact, I felt proud that I actually said want I wanted for a change, instead of feeling like I should please everyone else.

The thing is, I don’t know what to do now. I just don’t know what to do. I had maybe convinced myself he would say yes to returning to Spiro, even though I knew he wouldn’t. He said, in no uncertain terms, he will NEVER support a request for Spiro. So, if I want to return to Spiro, I will have to break the trust in the relationship. He also said to put the gel on in one hit, both sachets at once, yet everywhere else says to put one on in the morning, and one at night, in separate dosages. So I feel like he doesn’t even know what he’s talking about. Did I just say that? Oh man, see, my mind has gone to a horrible place now. I shouldn’t be saying that.

Helplessness and resentment towards my Doctor for not letting me get my own way. Tut, tut, tut. He even compromised on the pills, so I can return to the Estrogen pills, and offered an alternative to the Spiro. It was an injection, I don’t think I could handle that, apparently this one knocks you out too, with wild mood swings. Doesn’t sound inviting. Grr, I just want to go back to Spiro :(

I am so confused right now. I even said to him, I don’t care if it kills me, I just want to feel the positive changes I felt while on it, but he said, what if we can get you to that positive place more safely. I heard him, but I didn’t actually hear him if you know what I mean. It like went in, but I didn’t care, all I could hear was, No, I will not let you go back to Spiro. Sodding Spiro, sometimes I wish I had never taken the bloody stuff.

Even with my messed up mind at the moment, I can see I’m learning from everything that is happening, and becoming a better person. I trust the universe. I trust myself.

A FEW WEEKS LATER

The dust has settled, I meditated a lot over the past few weeks. I had a break down in front of my Sister, Niece and Nephew a couple of days after this appointment. That wasn’t nice at the time, but looking back, maybe the best thing that ever happened. I also received a letter from the gender Dr a week ago, saw my GP and am now back on the Estrogen pills. I may end up going back to patches, the truth is, something happened over the past few weeks. I truly let go. Let go of control. I can tell. It’s a deep feeling inside. Looking back over the past few months, I’m the one who changed all the hormones. I’m the one who caused most of this suffering.

If the Doctor in the future says he wants me to go back to patches for safety reasons, I will. I have to stop being in control of everything. If I continue like this, the transition will be ten times harder than it needs to be. It’s already hard enough as it is, without me complicating matters all the time. If I really have faith in the universe, than let it be. It is a two way thing, I have to have an element of control, but I also need to know when to let go. This whole time I have always done my best. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m learning from them. I guess needing to be a control freak for the past few months was the best I could do at that time, I couldn’t have done it any better, but it’s positive because it led me to this place now where I can fully let go.

It’s ironic, the act of me getting the pills that only came about because of my insane need to be in control, is the very thing that has allowed me to let go. It’s hard to explain. I guess as I saw my body and mind going backwards over the past few months, I became impatient and hell bend on forcing the pills back into my life. My intuition still says the pills are the right thing for me, I seem to respond to them better. Within a week of returning to the pills for instance, I regained the sensitive nipples, which to me signifies growth. This was non existent on the gel, and took a lot longer to emerge on the patches.

It’s not just that, my mind feels so much more at peace on the pills. I wake up happy. Maybe it’s all mental? They are more dangerous, and I have a return of the leg cramps that I had before, but this could be growing pains, I’m going to see a GP about it tomorrow. If she says come off the pills, so be it. The universe is in control, I believe the universe will look after me. I have this strange sense that no matter what I do, it will be ok. Which is strangely why I still have this slight sensation of wanting to go back to the Spiro, because the Universe will look after me no matter what, so why not do it? Right now though, I would rather protect the relationship with my Doctor.

My Transgender Hormone Therapy Appointments did carry on with me seeing a Doctor every three months or so, and while I hand wrote diary entries, I never posted any more onto the website, but I do intend to type them up in the future. So for the moment, the rest of these sessions became private affairs, about my private parts lol