Better Living Through Chemisty

Recently a girl here local in Balmer decided that it was time for her to start her journey on chemistry.  Many of us of course choose this path.  But I sometimes wonder if we do it for the wrong reasons.  And in the case of this person, she had decided to plunge ahead even though her medical advisors had other ideas.  She charged them with "gatekeeping" but I do not agree.  More on that in a bit, first lets get out our chemistry sets.

When I was a kid I always wanted one of these. But it never happened, I think my folks were the sort that knew I might use that stuff in devilish ways.  I had some aptitude for chemistry you see, and later learned how to do things like make nylon in a beaker, distill spirits in my high school lab and discover what sodium can do if you toss it into a lab sink full of water.  Neat stuff.  BOOM!  

But I digress.  The chemistry I am talking about usually comes in pill, or patch or injection.  And for most of us on the MtF trail involves two parts.  That which kills the "T", and that which enhances the "E".  If you check the periodic table you will not find those elements on there.  Yeah, even Tungsten got silly and is named after Wolfram (W), das ist gut, ja?.  No this "T" is Testosterone.  And "T" may be the most potent compound on the planet.  The non-reversible things it does in a very short time is astonishing. Oh yeah, it also wants to make you kick the shit out of somebody, ever see "Fight Club"

I have some FtM friends.  Six months of "T" and they are mostly done.  Bam!  Facial hair, male pattern baldness, muscles, voice.  It all kicks in quick.  And to think, I was dealing with that for 47 years.  Well kind of.  You see in my case it turns out my "T" level was abnormally low.  Now not as low as a natal woman or anything, but low enough that you get one of those little warning thingies on the blood test from the doctor.  You know, an asterisk * or something.  The thing that says, hey Doc, look at me, this one is out of whack.

In my case at the time I thought "Ah ha!", this is the root cause of my problem.  Low "T".  I can fix that, and this whole thing will just go away.  Right?  I posed this to my doctor who did not know I was TS, hell I did not even know for sure what I was, as such the subject was taboo for me at the time.  But the number on the chart did not lie.  So what did we do?  Well I was searching for the cure you see.  And this had to be it!  And so, with physician's embrace, I embarked on a course of applying this "T" gel to my bod everyday to see if it would help me guy up. I did this for 4 months.  And at the end of 4 months I went in for another blood test.  Sure enough it went up! By 1 point.  No kidding, 1, one, uno.  Meaning that normal is something between 199 and 1586 ng/dL. And mine went up by 1.  Which is probably within the error on the test.  The gel had done nothing.

I took that as a sign, this is not going to solve your problem.  It was near that time that I began to really consider what that meant for me.  My body did not want "T".  It had rejected it.  I do not know how it did it but somehow it knew, this stuff is bad news for you.  I stopped taking it.  Started figuring me out, started therapy, had my episode and then accepted and embraced the fact that I was trans.  The next part was figuring out what to do about it.

I had read that there were folks who had taken Spironolactone (aka Spiro) to block the "T" and that subsequently the desire to transition went away.  For the sake of my marriage at the time I thought, ok, lets give that a try.  This may seem odd to some.  I was going to take this drug to see if I felt better, see if the desire to transition went away, and see if I could save my marriage. Note there was nothing in there about taking it to promote or start a transition.  This, in many ways was my last chance to not transition.  And that goes to my previous thoughts on why you start taking such things.

The reactions I got from the few who knew of this (my spouse included) was at first, this is ok as long as you are doing it with your doctor's support (which I was).  Later this changed to "You are taking hormones".  When in reality I was merely taking something that was in effect, purposely, NOT taking hormones.  It is kind of funny, when folks take a pill to feel better most think that is ok.  You can take a valium, or prozac and if those things make you feel better, calmer, less agitated this is just fine.  Take Spiro and they get jumpy.


Well as you can see, my plan failed, kind of...  Obviously the taking of the Spiro did not reduce my desire to transition.    Mind you before I start this next bit I always caution folks, your mileage may, and likely will, vary.  Here is what it did for me.  I felt calm.  And that is a statement in the midst of my world with an absurd amount of stress tossed on top of a transition.  But the reality is I was almost always angry before Spiro.  After now, I get more disappointed than angry.  Here is an example.


You are driving on the highway and some jerk cuts you off an a lane change...


Before Spiro:  You accelerate up to his window, honk the horn, flip him the bird, utter a slander and then wait until he wants to change lanes and you cut him off.  You know, just to get even and all.

After Spiro: You think to yourself, "You poor stupid bastard, someday you are going to die pulling a boneheaded move like that".  And then you smile at that and just keep driving on, no other action needed.


See the difference?  After Spiro, I already won, by just accepting that he was a jerk and karma would fix it.  No need for me to take action to "teach the lesson".


My friend "J" says it another way.  Imagine lying in bed at night with a humming transformer on a pole outside your bedroom window.  That incessant "Hmmmmmmmmmm" of the 60Hz.  After a while you get used to it but it is still there, grating on you.  With Spiro, the noise goes away.  Click.  Silence.


In that sense the Spiro corrected something for me that made me nuts.  It was my version of Prozac or whatever.  I think it has saved me.  So mind you I took it for one reason, the results were another.  And none of that was about the physical changes it introduced which I will allow you all to read about on Wikipedia or something.


"E" (Estrogen in many forms) is something else.  Meaning I started "E" because I was taking Spiro.  As was explained to me, you can take the Spiro for a while, but your body needs either "T" or "E".  Just to be healthy.  So if you are killing off the "T", you must take "E" to bring balance to the force...  So I started that last Summer.  But again, not because of transition as much as I liked what the Spiro did and the "E" became a necessary part of that.  Make sense?


I know some at this point are scratching their head.  But Sharon there is a playbook for this stuff.  And right here on page 243 it says you take this stuff for the physical changes.  It is how you become a woman and all.  You know what, ha!  I laugh at your page 243.  Yes there are some side effects that I am happy with, softer skin, less hair in some places, reduction of muscle mass, general softening of my contours and face.  But in my case, almost no breast enhancement.  And the truth is I took it all because of how it made me feel, not how it would make me look.


I cannot say if that is chemistry for the right reasons.  For me it is right.  And so it made me wonder about that local girl again who got pissed off when her medical pros would not write the paper for her.  They wanted to see her for a few months first, then write the paper.  There is a reason for that you see.  It is not gate keeping, it is the Hippocratic oath.  


"I will prescribe regimens for the good of my patients according to my ability and my judgment and never do harm to anyone."  


And these are people that do not know you, and do not know if you are stable, and do not know if you have underlying disease or pathology.  So my take, let them do their work. And sometimes that work takes time.


The thing with this is none of these things magically lead you to the promised land on their own.  The idea that everything will be ok if I just could change/add/remove _________ [add your answer here].  There is no morning where you wake up and there are gumdrop trees, and unicorns and rainbows.  In fact, the chemistry is just one piece of the puzzle.  The rest, and larger part resides in the grey matter between your ears.  So my caution to the impatient.  Nothing that ever lasted was built in haste. Why should it be different for you?