I mentioned previously that - improbable though it seems - HRT has awoken in me a love of all things spicy.
That particularly journey began with my friend A; who developed her own love of hot sauce when she transitioned, and shared it with me.
I now find out, completely independently, that my adopted daughter P - also well on her hormone therapy way - has suddenly discovered a fascination with hot foodstuffs.
As much as I report on such phenomena with my tongue firmly in cheek, I'm beginning to think that this might an actual measurable side effect!
So I had Nongshim Black ramen for lunch; I was snacking on original-flavor Takis; and thinking about making chicken for dinner and liberally heaping Lousiana hot sauce on top.
It occurred to me: when did I start eating so many spicy foodstuffs?
Not that I was ever spice-averse; but in my prior life, I certainly didn't seek the stuff out. Now, however, I cannot get enough heat (with the proviso that it's cut with lots and lots of acid; spiciness by itself isn't particularly fun).
I would attribute this particular zag to a routine change in taste; but the exact thing happened to my friend A also once she started her HRT regimen. So - what I lost in temperature tolerance, I apparently now make up for in love of heat!
My HRT regimen is an emulation, only simulating the real thing. Cis women experience a complex, month-long dance between estrogen and progesterone, swinging from one to the other and back again. I, on the other hand, experience an estrogen peak every two weeks, and a progesterone peak every quarter.
And that's okay! It's gotten the job done.
Sometimes however, my peaks and troughs happen to look just enough like an actual cis cycle to trigger some fascinating side effects.
This one occurred a few weeks ago. My day started as normal; but something seemed off. I got to work, and began to experience stomach cramps. My first thought was that I must have consumed some disagreeable foodstuff; but this was different - the sensations were prickly; and extended all the way into my pelvis.
It wasn't until lunch time, as I was driving my daughter home from summer school, that it came to me: these were menstrual cramps!
My hormone levels had aligned in such a way that my brain was now sending instructions down my existing nerve pathways to forcefully contract a non-existent uterus...
This state of affairs continued for two days; with what I can only describe as various muscle groups from the top of the abdomen all the way down to the thighs randomly and constantly pinging, eliciting a continuous stream of "Ow! Ow!" noises.
Now: is this exactly what cis women experience? I have no idea. Did the lack of uterus effectively cap the amount of discomfort I felt? Or did it cause the nerve signals to be redirected into other adjacent muscles, making their contractions worse? It's so hard to say.
What I do know is this: I already had a healthy respect for the unpleasantness of menstrual cramps as experienced by others; but this situation made for a very personal window into that world that really reinforced my prior understanding!
Addendum: there is a candy dish in my office that is periodically emptied, and refilled; fortuitously, its contents had been refreshed the day this all went down. My very audible "Oh, thank god!" drew laughter from one of the people that worked nearby and knew what I was going through!
I have covered before the exciting world of nipple rotation. Well: now they are rotating back! I suppose it stands to reason; that the early stages of breast development result in a certain lopsidedness that self-corrects as the girls fill out.
The only reason this is noteworthy for me is that unlike most female pubescents, I have nipple piercings (acquired without moral hazard) and thus had a very visual gauge by which to observe this entire tilting process!
I have a lot of insecurity about is my hairline. I am, in retrospect, very lucky; I had very thick hair growing up, and even though it thinned over the years, I avoided the male-pattern baldness that struck my siblings. That’s no meager blessing for a trans woman that began her journey late in life.
However; at the time I began my transition, it had thinned extensively; especially at the peak. This really didn’t do any favors for my self-consciousness at the time.
Now, strictly speaking, some level of hair restoration is not uncommon with HRT; however, it’s far from guaranteed, and there’s no set timeline in which it might happen. After a year, I felt like very little had changed (which I attributed to the original loss being caused by damage, and not years of testosterone poisoning).
Imagine my surprise then at seeing an older picture of myself, and realizing that the problem then was a lot more severe than it is now. It’s a very difficult thing to gauge, but it feels like maybe a few long-dormant follicles have sprung back to life!
More generally, it seems that many of the hair-related side effects of HRT just take a long, long time to kick in. I had some hairs on my shoulders and upper arms; and as they were still present six months into my HRT regimen, I planned on having them removed. I recently discovered that they seem to have mainly disappeared of their own accord; so evidently I just need to be patient about these things!
Yep... yesterday's workout did a real number on my girl muscles. I've got minor strains in my forearms, shoulders, and weirdly, thighs (which is what I get for trying to be a human jack, I guess).
I realize now that I'm reluctant to tell the men in my life "I'm sorry, I cannot physically carry this; you need to do it for me" because:
It feels sexist;
Despite all the physical changes I've experienced this year, my frame is still the same - and I worry that people will extrapolate from this that I'm still equally physically capable.
I don't know what the solution is, but I need to figure something out before too long because I'm getting really tired of these injuries...
My company has decided to rearrange our current layout; so I went into our location today for the purpose of conveying the contents of my current office to my new office.
Amongst other items, this includes some solid wooden shelves and a two-piece desk. These are not light items.
In the past, I've been able to move these things myself (albeit with great effort and probably minus OSHA approval); brute-forcing them onto a dolly and wheeling them to their destination.
Not this time around though! I just didn't have the strength. I was able to get some of the smaller pieces by myself, but when it came to the main part of the desk I had to rope our network engineer in for assistance.
(And he made it look so easy! At one point he had to take the weight of the whole thing while I moved and it didn't phase him in the slightest!)
It's fascinating because I don't actually feel, in any way, shape or form, weaker; but the evidence absolutely speaks for itself. As I've noted before - there's a serious danger that I will injure myself because I can't estimate my own strength properly anymore.
In addition, I ran into an older member of our organization. The last time we met I was in a dress, and he gave a sort of weird half-chuckle / smile that could be interpreted as "Good for her!" or "That's hilarious".
This time around, I said hi and he responded with "Yes, sir".
I can't tell yet whether he's just struggling to adjust or holds some actual, maladjusted views; but now I'm kind of wondering.
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action." - Auric Goldfinger
Guess I will wait for a third time and see what happens!
For years, I've had a nuclear technique at my disposal: 'The Look'. It's a three-quarter profile, dimpled smile that would instantly summon bashfulness on her part and result in an averted gaze.
Not anymore though! I tried this a little while back, and... nothing! No effect. Through rigorous scientific testing (i.e. randomly and unexpectedly applying The Look), we have determined that it just... doesn't work anymore!
We have no idea why this is - only that it coincides with the changes that have slowly been taking place in my facial structure. It's okay - it doesn't impact our relationship at all - but it's still fascinating!
I’ve previously touched on how HRT has affected my ability to tolerate extremes of temperature. Today was an interesting illustration to that effect.
First, my wife - who is much wiser in these matters than I - took stock of the current temperature before going outside. (I generally choose my outerwear first and foremost based on what will compliment my current outfit, and then complain loudly while shivering in the car.)
She told me that it was currently 28ºF. In a former life I would have considered this ‘mild’; and maybe - maybe - thrown on a light jacket. Apparently I am learning however, because today I said to myself: “Twenty-eight degrees?! Time to break out the winter coat.”
In my former life, I was not above eating the occasional calorie-laden novelty food item (”Try our Kitchen Sink Burger!”) or having pizza for dinner and leftover pizza for breakfast. And this was all good and well.
Post-HRT however, I have learned (the hard way! Oh, oh, very much the hard way!) that I can no longer overindulge in this fashion. My gastrointestinal tract is a great deal more sensitive and will rebel in most spectacular fashion if I try to force-feed it some kind of burrito that inexplicably counts among its contents an individual’s annual supply of cheese and over one pound of french fries.
As much as some might mourn this change, I see it as a positive - now I’m eating the way that frankly, I should have always been eating. Still, not something that I was anticipating from a therapy the primary purpose of which is to make me look more girly!
Sore thighs! My goodness.
To be fair, this isn’t really a side-effect of HRT, but rather my chosen delivery mechanism: intramuscular injection. Let me back up:
There are a lot of ways to ingest estradiol (everyone’s favorite, sexy estrogen). Pills (swallowed), pills (held under the tongue), pills (held under the lip), patches, creams, injections, implants...
How much of the hormone actually absorbed into the body (as opposed to being accidentally digested, say) varies between methods; and what works for one individual might not work for another.
I was advised early on that injections were the way to go; and that’s the route I took. I think it’s worked out pretty well in terms of the speed of my results!
However, it does mean that every two weeks I get to to inject 1ml of estradiol cypionate into my thigh muscle.
The injections themselves aren’t fun, but are actually pretty painless if all steps are followed to the letter (a process that really deserves its own post). Barring the occasional mishap, they are quite tolerable.
However, the muscle does not immediately absorb the estradiol. Instead, a depot is created - a little 1ml bubble of fluid that lives in my thigh and slowly releases it’s hormonal goodness into the surrounding tissue.
The day after it can feel pretty sore (as if I had caught my thigh on a piece of furniture); and frankly, it feels kinda weird having this tiny marble in my leg. It’s a small price to pay however for getting to be me; so I pay it gladly!
Confusing simple homonyms.
For context: while I am not dyslexic, there are certain idiosyncrasies with how my brain inputs, organizes, and outputs information that resembles a mild form of that particular disorder.
One example would be: analog clocks confuse me. My brain takes great umbrage at the hour hand - which is the larger unit of measurement - being represented by the smaller hand; and vice versa with the minute hand. If I need to read an analog clock, I have to manually reassert the correct order of the hands in my head; and this happens with each and every attempt.
Another is that certain words have unintuitive spellings (e.g. ‘Wednesday’; ‘business’); and I have to intentionally mispronounce them in my head to recall the correct spelling.
These are not major impediments; but are something I deal with on a daily basis. (As to why this is, I have no idea - there is a known association between left-handedness and dyslexia, so perhaps this has something to do with it; it could also be a result of the structural mismatch between my brain and body).
After starting HRT, I noticed that I was regularly confusing simple homonyms - ‘to’ and ‘too’; ‘now’ and ‘know’; ‘their’ and ‘they’re’; and so on. While I’ve been dealing with this problem my whole life, the actual set of troublesome words has been fixed since childhood; so it’s kind of interesting to see not only the set now expand, but with basic vocabulary that has never posed an issue before!
I sometimes get asked by people that have to stare intently at my face (usually in some professional capacity):
“Your skin is so good! What’s your secret?”
And I tell them:
“Every two weeks I shoot my thigh full of the cool, sexier estrogen!”
As with a number of other effects, I knew that I could expect softer, better skin. However, I didn’t truly appreciate with any kind of granularity as to what that actually meant.
For one thing: I have no breakouts, no blemishes; I changed literally nothing about my diet or skincare routine, and suddenly my face is completely crystal-clear.
(The one exception to this seems to be immediately after I load up my progesterone; although even here, ‘blemish’ seems kind of a strong word for a series of nearly imperceptible bumps.)
For another: my pores have shrunk! This caused some issues in the first couple of weeks, as it effectively forced some of them to trap their contents; but that went away after a little over a month and it’s been plain, small-pored sailing ever since!
The one downside - and it really isn’t much of one - is this: I am actually allergic to cats (which is probably not a great trait in a cat owner); but have great tolerance providing said cats are not rubbing themselves on my face. Doing so would set off a reaction where my lips would tingle and I would break out in hives.
Since starting HRT, the time in which this reaction occurs has gone from many minutes after the initial contact to practically seconds. It really isn’t much of a problem (and truthfully, I’ll gladly accept hives as a consequence of cat affection); but it’s interesting to see how yet another tiny part of my life has been impacted by the simple expedient of transposing my hormone levels!
Skittering!
Strictly speaking I started HRT on year ago; but my endocrinologist didn’t want to go full-throttle with dosages until he had established that doing so would, in fact, not cause me to die (which seems perfectly reasonable).
It really wasn’t until around... April-ish?... that my levels actually got to where they needed to be; and the moment it happened, it was like a switch in my body just flipped.
Then I started skittering around the apartment. I would bounce off the walls! Dance in the kitchen. There was shimmying. Oh so much shimmying!
I told my spouse: “Sorry, I don’t know why I do this. I guess it’s just a thing!”
I’ll never forget their response: “You don’t need to apologize. It means you’re happy.” Beat. “I’ve... I’ve waited so long for this. For you to be happy.”
Of course, this does rather make it sound as if the preceding years were spent in unspeakable misery, and this was not the case. It might be accurate however to say that I spent a lot of time giving my love to others and never reserving any for myself. Undoubtedly there are greater acts of loving oneself out there; but I figure committing to turn one’s gender upside down is up there!
Here’s to my newfound physical expression of joyousness!
Muscle strains.
I knew I was going to (and wanted to) lose muscle mass on HRT, and that this would significantly lower my functional strength. I assumed that during this process, I would simply adjust to my new strength levels as I went along.
Not so - my brain continues to assume it’s working with pre-HRT muscle capacity.
As a result, I keep injuring myself in new and novel ways. For instance, I used to buy 40lb containers of cat litter at the store; but after straining the muscles in my forearm several weeks in a row, gave up and switched to 24lbs instead. I don’t recall ever having strained a forearm muscle prior to that.
Now my neck and shoulders are kicking my ass; I assume from either tanking a forty pack of water or moving my desk (or both).
I imagine at a certain point I will (like everything else) unlearn this habit and replace it with something more fitting. Until then, I find myself pausing before certain physical tasks and asking myself: “Wait, can I still do this?”...
I’m not really up to speed on Tumblr etiquette yet, but I believe the polite thing to do when dealing with heavy material is to provide a content preface. To that end: this is a kinda heavy. There’s abuse and stuff.
Sooo... PTSD. This is an actual, unexpected side effect of HRT. Let me explain.
I’ve previously touched on the idea that I have a female-structured brain; that certain parts of it require estrogen to function correctly; and that during the pre-HRT portion of my life, these parts operated poorly (or not at all).
A large - and rather nuanced - group of these malfunctions come under the umbrella heading of ‘emotional processing’ (or lack thereof); including the inability to:
Fully feel my emotions,
Understand them,
Connect them to my thoughts,
Communicate them to others;
...And perhaps most importantly, make sense of (and move past) the various negative events that life likes to throw at us.
Once HRT kicked in and supplied the estrogen my brain so desperately craved, all of this changed! I cannot stress what an incredible experience it was to go from zero to full emotional processing capacity virtually overnight.
The next thing I discovered, however - much to my chagrin - was that far from passing through the troughs of life with a stiff upper lip, rather I had simply deferred my response to those events. Now the bill was due.
I relived a lot of grief and anger: at the loss of loved ones; at lines crossed; at years in the wrong body.
One day, I had a disagreement; the matter was settled amicably, but afterwards I felt ill at ease. Without even understanding why, I gathered up my three animal friends and retreated into our walk-in closet; turned out the lights, and just... sobbed. Great, unrelenting torrent of tears. I didn’t understand what was happening; only that I was terrified, and hurting.
After what felt like hours, my wife coaxed me back into the light and to normalcy.
As night approached the following evening, it happened again. And again. And again. Every night, for months on end.
During these episodes, I would experience repetitive, intrusive thoughts for which I had no context. “Please don’t hurt me!”; “Please stop hurting me!”; “Let me go!”; “Why did he hurt me?”
In retrospect, what I have been able to piece together is as follows:
These events were flashbacks. They relate to a trauma that I have no memory of; perhaps because it happened very early on in my life. Based on the intrusive thoughts - and other indicators, such as an intense phobia of forcible restraint and what I believe may have been unconscious efforts on my part to relive the original acts - I believe the trauma was sexual in nature.
HRT kick-started my brain; and the first item on the agenda was - completely unbeknownst to me - processing this forgotten trauma.
For the curious - I’m much better now; my wife and I are no strangers to PTSD symptoms and well-versed when it comes to handling them. Still; I cannot say that when I undertook that first estradiol shot, that I ever imagined it would unearth this particular landmine in my psyche.
I got my artistic creativity back.
For real.
I was bursting with creativity as a teenager. I wrote, I drew, I painted, I modeled, I designed, I composed. I would be overtaken by these ideas and was compelled to bring them into being.
...Then it went away.
This I ascribed to the usual factors: newfound work and family responsibilities that overtook my time.
Now I posit a different theory: it’s my belief that I have a female-structured brain; and that the operation of certain parts of it require a sufficient provision of estrogen. Suffice to say, by the end of the teenage years, estrogen was in rather short supply and my brain malfunctioned accordingly.
That is no longer an issue; and I find myself once again not only bursting with ideas but more importantly, utterly driven to birth them into the world. The catgirl shirt was one such project; now I’m about to complete a painting (details omitted here, as it’s mildly NSFW).
It’s good to be back!
I have no ability to regulate my temperature anymore. At least, not compared to how it used to be. Blazing sun? Sign me up! Below freezing? It’s all good! But... not anymore.
Now, that in and of itself wasn’t unexpected - pre-HRT, I read a comment from a trans girl to this exact effect (and indeed, that entire thread was the inspiration for this series of posts).
What really gets me is when and where my newfound lack of temperature tolerance likes to strike. Today, I was sweating bullets and getting flushed because I was eating soup. Soup!
So... your sense of smell becomes more sensitive. That’s not particularly unknown (although you’ll hardly find it on the informed consent form). No, the unexpected part is this:
CATS SMELL SO GOOD.
Oh my god! They are like tiny precious babies. All I want to do is inhale my cats (while they look on in utter and well-justified bewilderment).
I can’t really think of a good way of putting this, so: my nipples have rotated!
I know this because I have piercings that precede HRT, and they were fully horizontal when they were put in; now, they slant inwards at almost 45º.
It’s all good - they still look beautiful - but I have to wonder if they will remain this way forever or if they might level out again as the girls fill out...
There are the changes you expect from MtF HRT - breast growth, body fat redistribution; all that good stuff. And then there are the changes that are nobody ever talks about (because they defy easy description, or are simply inconsequential).
I noticed this one recently: I've been sleeping on my back. I never used to sleep on my back - only on my side. Maybe it’s because of the girls? Who knows!