THeMaCHinE said:
I just started HRT. I've settled on 100 mg enan e5d. (prescribed 200/wk, so accumulating some leftovers) Will get my blood tested again on the 15th to see where it has brought me to. (I need to come in on the high end so she doesn't suspect I'm saving part of the 200). I was at 175; low end of the scale was 300...
I need to have a conversation with my doc about staying on. I don't think she intends to keep me on HRT continuously... Any suggestions?
I haven't been on HRT long enough to cycle, but I plan on it in the future...
A little word of advice on how to get some "extra".....keep doing what you are doing, if the test results come in low, then that will be a good argument for giving you more. And if she doesn't agree, go to a urologist and complain about the symptoms of low testosterone and bring your lab work. They are usually more amenable to "male" issues that other physicians and are also less concerned about the stigma of prescribing male hormones to improve sexual function. There is no way a physician can predict how much you metabolize. Everyone is different. For some reason, I metabolize testosterone at a very high rate. Every time I have chaged physicians, they didn't believe it and had to reprove it to themselves while putting me through misery by taking me off and then finding the "correct dose" by lab tests and trial and error dosages. In the end, all came to the same conclusion. I was told by one physician that of several hundred patients that she had give HRT to, she had never seen anyone metabolize testosterone like I do. She said it is like a "black hole" you put it in and within a week, it is completely gone. They all ended up putting me on 400 mg/week of cypionate or enanthate just to keep me in the low normal range by the end of 7 days. What is really good is that since my insurance doesn't cover self injected testosterone it actually works in my favor. Because to accuarately do 400 mg/week, you really need to get it in 1 ml vials that cost more than 2 1/2 times as much. But since purchasing a precription 10 ml multi dose vial (MDV) is MUCH cheaper than individual vials, I got all of my physicians to cave in to save me money and prescribe a 10 MDV. The cost is $85 versus $256 for individual vials. So that also means a I get a "little extra" each month as well.
Also you should not cycle off of your HRT basic dose that is prescribed for HRT. This is because your body was not making enough test to begin with and to cycle off you would have to do everything that you would do if going off cycle. Unfortunately, at best you would only return over time to the below normal test levels that you had and you can pretty well expect to loose everything if you do down that low. So do your cycles on top of your HRT. Your receptors won't be as fresh but it will work a LOT better than going off completely periodically. I had to learn this the hard way by trial and error over six to seven years of being on HRT.
THeMaCHinE said:
If I started at 175 on a scale of 300-900, will 100 mg e5d put on the high end of the range, or should I bump up dosage?
I doubt 100 mg/e5d will put you in the high range if you are taking your labs at the nadir (low point, i.e. the morning before the evening you give yourself the shot or at a point just before you give yourself a shot so you get the lowest reading to see how far your T levels have dropped). This is usually how they measure it for HRT. But the truth is that everyone is different and you really need to do a dose for a month or so and then come back in for lab work to verify if it is the appropriate dose for you. If not, they change it, go another month and then come back in for more labs to verify if it is correct in terms of blood concentrations. A physician also had professional judgement and clinical observation that they can use to justify amount different that what the labs indicate. Clinical observations include that even though your dosage puts you in the normal range, you still show clinical signs of low testosterone. Depending on how the physicians attitude about all this is, they can actually prescribe higher levels if the clinical signs are there.
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