I applied my first dose of testosterone tonight!
I had my second appointment with Dr. Voyvodic on February 26th. I went down to Toronto on Friday with my parents and stayed in a hotel with them. I spent the day Saturday with a friend checking out a really awesome queer/adult store called 'Come As You Are' on Queen street and I suggest it to anyone who is looking for a bright, clean, welcoming environment to support by purchasing adult products.
My appointment was at noon on Sunday. Sunday morning I got on the bus at about 9:45 and made it down to Kew Gardens by 11:00 which left me quite a bit of time to wander around. I ended up finding the closest Tim Horton's I could, after spotting a guy carrying a box of Timbits, and then taking the lunch I bought over to the park and finding a bench in the sun to sit on and eat. I explored the park a bit before heading over to my appointment.
When I got into the appointment I gave him my signed informed consent form. Which my mom had witnessed for me earlier that morning and my letter from Rupert Raj who did an assessment for me back at the beginning of February. We spent some time discussing how things had been for me since my last appointment with him a month before and he told me that he had not yet received the paperwork from my blood work that I had gotten done the week before. When he told me that I had been sure that it would be at least another appointment before he would offer me the prescription. I had been holding out hope that he would do it this visit but for the most part I believed it a kind of false hope. I was at the point where I wasn't sure what else we would really discuss if there was a third appointment.
It turns out that he was thinking the same thing. We had been talking about a few different things and he asked me what my expectations were for this visit. My response was that I expected it to be another step in the right direction, that I was here for another appointment and held not preconceived ideas of what might happen. It was shortly after that that he told me he saw no further reason to hold off on prescribing testosterone that I seemed to have thought it over very well and that I knew the information.
At that point we started discussing the form of T that he would prescribe. Luckily I just became eligible for benefits through work and had immediately signed up for them in hopes that I would get the prescription and it would then be more feasible financially. Dr. Voyvodic really backed the T-gel route and with the fact that I have benefits it made a lot of sense to me as well so we agreed to work with the gel and see how it goes which has a few benefits for me
1. Constant supply of hormones into my system. No peaks/troughs as with injections that may cause unwanted moods.
2. Easy to adjust dosages depending on what results are or are not being seen with the current dose, smaller doses and smaller increments possible than with injections.
3. With the option open to switch to injections, starting with gel gives my body to begin adjusting to the T without me also having to mentally adjust to self-injection or getting injections frequently along with the T.
At this point I'm on a VERY low dose I'm doing 1 pump from a bottle of Androgel 1% which is equivalent to 1.25mg/day. The recommended starting dosage for a cisman with low testosterone is 5mg/day (or 4 pumps). It was discussed that I would go with 1 pump a day for 3 weeks and then depending on how I'm reacting to it and what results I -may- be seeing I could go up to 2 pumps a day which would then be 2.5mg/day.
The real measure for success with hormone treatment beyond virilization is the end of my cycles. Whether my cycles end will really depend on how sensitive I am to the gel/hormones. I've always been really sensitive to female hormones when used as birth control so I'm hoping that it works the other way too but you never really know.
Despite being on such a small dosage I am going to start taking pictures more regularly and I am hoping to get the motivation to do a recording/video tomorrow so that I have something to look back on. My voice doesn't get recorded often and it would be interesting to be able to compare the changes.
The thing with the gel and dosages is that if it gets up to me taking a 5mg dose it would start costing me $60 a month even after my drug benefits kick in and although that isn't a lot in the grander scheme of things, I was willing to pay more than that for a gym membership. When I could get a similar dose in injection form for less than $10 a month it starts getting significant.
Sorry if this post was kind of dry. I am very excited to be ON TESTOSTERONE.![]()
I had my second appointment with Dr. Voyvodic on February 26th. I went down to Toronto on Friday with my parents and stayed in a hotel with them. I spent the day Saturday with a friend checking out a really awesome queer/adult store called 'Come As You Are' on Queen street and I suggest it to anyone who is looking for a bright, clean, welcoming environment to support by purchasing adult products.
My appointment was at noon on Sunday. Sunday morning I got on the bus at about 9:45 and made it down to Kew Gardens by 11:00 which left me quite a bit of time to wander around. I ended up finding the closest Tim Horton's I could, after spotting a guy carrying a box of Timbits, and then taking the lunch I bought over to the park and finding a bench in the sun to sit on and eat. I explored the park a bit before heading over to my appointment.
When I got into the appointment I gave him my signed informed consent form. Which my mom had witnessed for me earlier that morning and my letter from Rupert Raj who did an assessment for me back at the beginning of February. We spent some time discussing how things had been for me since my last appointment with him a month before and he told me that he had not yet received the paperwork from my blood work that I had gotten done the week before. When he told me that I had been sure that it would be at least another appointment before he would offer me the prescription. I had been holding out hope that he would do it this visit but for the most part I believed it a kind of false hope. I was at the point where I wasn't sure what else we would really discuss if there was a third appointment.
It turns out that he was thinking the same thing. We had been talking about a few different things and he asked me what my expectations were for this visit. My response was that I expected it to be another step in the right direction, that I was here for another appointment and held not preconceived ideas of what might happen. It was shortly after that that he told me he saw no further reason to hold off on prescribing testosterone that I seemed to have thought it over very well and that I knew the information.
At that point we started discussing the form of T that he would prescribe. Luckily I just became eligible for benefits through work and had immediately signed up for them in hopes that I would get the prescription and it would then be more feasible financially. Dr. Voyvodic really backed the T-gel route and with the fact that I have benefits it made a lot of sense to me as well so we agreed to work with the gel and see how it goes which has a few benefits for me
1. Constant supply of hormones into my system. No peaks/troughs as with injections that may cause unwanted moods.
2. Easy to adjust dosages depending on what results are or are not being seen with the current dose, smaller doses and smaller increments possible than with injections.
3. With the option open to switch to injections, starting with gel gives my body to begin adjusting to the T without me also having to mentally adjust to self-injection or getting injections frequently along with the T.
At this point I'm on a VERY low dose I'm doing 1 pump from a bottle of Androgel 1% which is equivalent to 1.25mg/day. The recommended starting dosage for a cisman with low testosterone is 5mg/day (or 4 pumps). It was discussed that I would go with 1 pump a day for 3 weeks and then depending on how I'm reacting to it and what results I -may- be seeing I could go up to 2 pumps a day which would then be 2.5mg/day.
The real measure for success with hormone treatment beyond virilization is the end of my cycles. Whether my cycles end will really depend on how sensitive I am to the gel/hormones. I've always been really sensitive to female hormones when used as birth control so I'm hoping that it works the other way too but you never really know.
Despite being on such a small dosage I am going to start taking pictures more regularly and I am hoping to get the motivation to do a recording/video tomorrow so that I have something to look back on. My voice doesn't get recorded often and it would be interesting to be able to compare the changes.
The thing with the gel and dosages is that if it gets up to me taking a 5mg dose it would start costing me $60 a month even after my drug benefits kick in and although that isn't a lot in the grander scheme of things, I was willing to pay more than that for a gym membership. When I could get a similar dose in injection form for less than $10 a month it starts getting significant.
Sorry if this post was kind of dry. I am very excited to be ON TESTOSTERONE.
