Starting to grow a beard... like so many high school boys...

Today was shot number twelve, bringing me up to eleven weeks on testosterone.  I am now out of syringes and will be going to the doctor on Tuesday.

I'm starting to grow a beard.  Alright, maybe not quite enough for me to call it that, and it's true that I had facial hair to begin with, but there's so much more of it.  In most lighting it actually shows up as facial hair, too, whereas it used to be you had to actually be looking for it.  It's also starting to fill in between the two distinct patches, and it's spreading along the jaw and connecting with the neck hair I usually shave off.  Grows out blonde, and then in a week or so it thickens up.  Really neat to watch, actually.

My motivation level tapered off a little.  The amount of time I spend exercising is... well, rather small.  But my eating habits are still relatively well-checked and my grades are still up.  Also, I'm down to 226 pounds (I'd gotten up to 240 in January).  I've found myself to be slightly more impulsive, which is probably a side effect of the whole motivation thing.  This is a mixed bag... it's coaxing me into doing things I should have started doing long ago, but it also means I do some things without thinking about them.

Wax Face And Other Stories

Giving myself my shot, beginning of week 2.

I haven't really been updating much on the shots, have I?

Well, here it goes.

I had shot number four last Thursday.  It was as painless as the shots on the first day.  Even the more painful shots aren't that bad, though... shots two and three stung, but they were definitely do-able.  Getting through the skin is not so much of a challenge yet, and it only starts hurting once the needle is maybe 3/4 of an inch in, and not very bad.

So, changes.  Have there been some?  Well, the answer is "yes."  It's been three weeks and five days and my body is clearly at war for my ovaries.  My skin, especially, bounces in condition like a small rubber ball, except this rubber ball exists specifically because it doesn't know whether to trust the T or the E.

So on day two or three I got what I like to call wax face.  It looks kind of like this:

It's mostly on the forehead and the nose although it's on the upper cheeks as well.  That's oil.  That's maybe an hour after washing my face.  It makes the texture of my skin in general look more masculine.  It went away after a while but it happens again after every shot.  So it's definitely a hormonal thing, the same effect that makes adolescents get acne.

Speaking of which, I have that too.  It isn't so much on the face... I get a zit here and there anyway.  It's on my chest and shoulders.  I've been using a body wash for it and it's gone down, but it's still there to a degree that so far is not bothersome.

My voice is changing just a little.  It's mostly noticeable when I try hitting higher registers, like if I'm babytalking the dog or something I'll squeak.  Otherwise it's slightly deeper and raspier, but not in a way that's noticeable if you don't have a real frame of reference (like, if you listen to a video of me talking from pre-T versus one now).  That, like the face, bounces up and down quite a bit.

So that's that for now.

Welcome to T-Land, Jack...

I have been kind of freaking out since I got my T prescription on Friday because I learned at that appointment that my doctor and/or nurse was not going to be there for my first shot. I'd mostly heard from guys who had their first couple shots done by their doctor, and plus, those needles are fucking huge in case you didn't see them before.

And I'd really built myself up thinking this was going to SUCK but that I'd just begrudgingly do it anyway because I wanted to be on T so bad. I went to my aunt's house (you can hear her and my cousin in the background) because she also has to do injections (I mean, not this kind, but injections nonetheless) and I wanted somebody there for support.

It all went really fast. Like, the video I am posting right now is about nine minutes long, a lot of which is filling the syringe, and even that would have been much shorter had I not hit a blood vessel my first shot:


So, well, that was easy. And I am now officially on testosterone as of yesterday morning! Huzzah!

Guess what I got!

I will give you two guesses, and they'd better both involve huge needles.

Yesterday was my last pre-T appointment with my therapist.  She gave me my T letter for my appointment with an endocrinologist for today.  I stayed at a friend's house because both were in the same area, rather far away from where I live, and bright and early the next morning there I was.

It was a lot easier than I thought.  They basically did a regular physical, then wrote out a prescription.  Then, after I already had my prescription, they took some blood for a baseline reading.  Interestingly, I hear all these stories of guys who have their first several shots at their doctor, but mine literally just told me how to do it and as soon as I fill the prescription I'm supposed to just, you know, pick it up.

I'm on .5 mL every seven days.  The needles in the picture are actually my practice needles.  I mean, they're the same needles and they're sterile, but they were given to me so I could practice and not to use for T.  Those needles I get when I buy them from whatever pharmacy I buy them at.  I get paid on Tuesday, so that'll probably be when, and I'm going to give myself the injection on Thursday because I'm meeting my aunt.

So that's that!  I'll keep you posted!
Happy Trails,
-- Jack

Doctor appointment scheduled.

Today I scheduled my appointment with an endocrinologist.  December 19th.  Four days later than I intended, but you know, who cares?

Got it with my second phone call.  The first wasn't taking new patients, although the receptionist seemed to try very hard to get me to set up an appointment with someone else at the same hospital.

"Are they experienced with transgender patients?"
"Well, err.... uh... I don't know, I can ask."
"I have some other people I can call who I know are, I think I'll call them."
"Are you sure?!  I can ask, it won't take that long!"

She starts rattling off doctor's names, which I don't recognize, and I'm trying to find someone who might take my insurance and I know all of the people on my list at least take it for non-transgender stuff.  So I tell her I'll call back if I don't find someone else.

Next call, I asked if the endo was taking new patients, she said "yes."  I say I want to start hormone replacement therapy.  She asks if I have a letter (angelic noise).  I say I will have one, but that's not the point, the point is that the receptionist actually knew something about the subject.  She said I couldn't set up an appointment without bringing in a letter, but somehow she still set it up.  I think I may have misheard that first bit, maybe she meant I couldn't have the appointment until then, but again, that's a moot point because my therapist and I already planned out when I should go in, so the letter will be done by that time.

Not my T-date, though.  My T-date is probably going to be in early January if there are no problems found (fingers crossed).

Medical Misgendering

I was thinking about top surgery doctors lately, and the two names that were given to me in my program were Dr. Brownstein in San Francisco and Dr. Steinwald by Chicago.  I am looking around at other doctors too to find the right cross between price and results (of course, I have time to save money for this, so more weight on the "results") but as I was looking I did notice something unsettling I'd like to bring to your attention.

It concerns the FTM mastectomy results on Dr. Steinwald's page.

For example:

21 year-old female seeking gender reassignment/top surgery; presented with a youthful/fuller B-cup bra size and aesthetics, which made her an excellent candidate for a single-stage FTM chest masculinization as an outpatient.

Since I know most of you are coming here from sites criticizing me for pointing this out because not all chest surgeries are done on male-identified people, I'll state that yes, there are male-identified people on that site being referred to using female pronouns who did not consent to this and who do not appreciate this.  He apparently uses female pronouns on his medical notes, too.

Recently I also noticed that some trans men's therapists put female pronouns on their T-letters.

I don't have much to say about any of this right now except that it's disturbing that people who work with us would make such a big mistake.

More Natural Transitioning Stuff

Another warning against trying Natural Transitioning without actually following it from TheSLOfox:

Natural Transitioning

[Im Cr Sage Ross]

This essay is subject to a lot of edits as of December 18th, 2011.  It's basically a whole new article.

I'm going to be sort of frank and blunt in this essay because this is an opinion I really want to make clear to people.  A lot of my trans guy friends are getting into a particular method of transition and are becoming nearly evangelical about it.  It's a method to increase the amount of testosterone an FTM man's body makes without injecting testosterone. It's called "Natural Transitioning^TM" and involves essentially using the same techniques and supplements bodybuilders use.

So why do people use NT?  It has essentially been advertised as something for trans men who have medical problems preventing them from taking testosterone, but honestly there are few people who actually use it for that reason because for as massive an undertaking hormone therapy may be, it doesn't have all that many contraindications that wouldn't also contraindicate NT.  People do it to avoid therapy, because they believe it is safer, because they can't afford some part of the medical process, some even because they are either vegans or natural health junkies.  If you are in these categories, I'd advise you to take this to note.

My First Therapy Appointment

Harry Benjamin

Yesterday was my first therapy appointment.  I figured in case any of you are going to start therapy I'd talk about what goes on at my appointments.  I assume that this stuff varies from therapist to therapist, but that's just the way it goes.  It's also a personal transition diary.

I am going to call my therapist K because from what I hear her program is kind of popular and I don't want to slam her with more requests.  It uses the Harry Benjamin standards of care, which I didn't want to do but which I don't regret.  So far.

I show up early enough to go to the post office to mail something to Australia.  The office itself is in a residential building on the top floor, I punch the numbers into it and am let in.  K tells me through the speaker to use the elevator.  When I get to the top, she greets me and I enter.

Nightmares!

I'm having a great deal of stress lately, premature stress.  I haven't even gone to my first therapy session yet (one week and five days!) but I'm having so much stress related to testosterone it's insane.  I mean, it's at least around three months and two weeks before I even will know if I get the damned stuff and I'm worried about stuff like whether or not I'll be able to self-inject or whether or not I'm going to go bald.

I have financial worries, too, but right now I have enough support where I shouldn't worry too much.  Plus I have a job interview on Monday, and if they've hired my cousin, they should hire me.  My main reason for stress there is that I don't want them to fire me for being trans... not just because of the getting-fired-for-being-trans part, but because this is one of my favorite stores and I don't want to feel obligated to boycott them for firing me for a stupid reason.  But anyway, although finances are stressful, they aren't the stressful part of this.

The nightmares, though, are.

Transsexual differences in brain structure...

Found this article today through my feed reader... they've done yet more studies on trans brains to see if the structure more closely resembles brains of cis males or cis females.  We already know that in the brains of dead trans women, there is a difference in the area of the brain called the stria terminalis compared with cis males.  In other words, it's closer to perceived sex.  Interestingly I've seen this study quoted a lot by gay men to justify homosexuality, which is weird because there was no difference between the stria terminalis when it came to sexuality.  This is a relatively old and well-known study, and if I recall right they did do the same on trans men and found similar results.  The brain differences were there regardless of whether or not the trans person in question was on hormones.

But I digress.  They have a new study, two new studies actually, based on four particular areas of the white matter of the human brain in which males and females differ significantly, and in fact it can be done while one is still alive.  One study dealt with trans men, the other with trans women.  In each study, roughly 20 cis men, cis women, and trans people had their brains scanned to look at these four particular areas.