Mtf - Blog Posts

Unexpected HRT side-effect #4: addendum

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.”

New shoes

Exactly what it says on the tin. I got new shoes!

Purchased from NerdyKeppie (not an affiliate link; I just like to share neat stuff). I did see some comments about the high-tops running small, but I wear a US women’s 10 and they fit me perfectly.

(I will note however that unlike regular Chucks, they don’t have that little canvas loop on the back - so getting them on can be a battle.)

Love me some subtle trans pride!

Thigh straps

In my early twenties, I conceived of a story in which two individuals - one half-angel, the other half-demon - formed an unlikely alliance. I am not going to pretend that this concept was either original or going to set the literary world on fire; and it didn’t got much further than an initial outline and some character sketches.

I did have a particular affection for the design of the half-angel however; as his outfit incorporated a number of feminine elements. He wore a stylized headpiece (fundamentally a headband); a tunic with an incorporated tabard (practically a slit midi dress); and perhaps most glaringly, stockings held in place by leather straps.

In hindsight, it’s pretty obvious that I was trying to express my own gender confusion via a safe and private medium. (Exacerbated, I imagine, by having recently moved to an area that rigidly enforced gender norms.)

Happily, this is no longer the case and I am quite out the world as a woman!

Recently a friend reminded me that there is a whole world of leather-type garters out there. This triggered a series of thoughts in which I recalled the design of the half-angel; then realized how heavily his clothing had been inspired by my own suppressed desires; and finally set out to determine if thigh straps were actually a thing you could buy.

As always, Etsy delivers (bother metaphorically and literally); and now I am both living out my girlhood dream and also, finally able to stop my socks from falling down!

(It did occur to me, after they arrived, that the principle is no different from that of a regular belt - it is merely the length of the leather strap that differs. So at some point, I may go looking for a couple of cheap belts to cut to size and re-punch.)

Dresses

Each year my company celebrates Christmas with an all-employee dinner. I greatly enjoy socializing with my colleagues, but I’ve always found these events a bit overwhelming and have tried to dodge them where ever possible.

Not this year however! I am out, and very much planned to celebrate in style... Which, of course, did not happen (what with there being a very disruptive killer virus on the loose and all).

All the same, I bought myself a delightful Christmas dress - I was particularly smitten with the lacy sleeves. So imagine my confusion when it arrived, and instead of getting the dress on the left:

...I received the one on the right (sans sleeves).

Two months later, I realize that these are in fact two entirely different dresses and that I had mistakenly ordered the second one on the insane assumption that the brand only carried the one sangria-colored number.

I... am not a smart girl.

Delightfully, they still had the original dress in stock (and only in my size to boot); so I have one winging it’s way to me now!

Dancing

I did not dance in in my past life. At various points I was cajoled into the act, which resulted in a display lacking any kind of gracefulness or aesthetic pleasure.

I played a lot of Dance Dance Revolution, which I love dearly but resembles actual dancing in much the same way that Jazzercise resembles actual jazz.

Post-HRT, I found myself spontaneously dancing; while enjoyable for me however, I doubt the end result was particularly enjoyable for anyone else.

Recently my spouse has made a point of impromptu slow-dancing with me. This is not a new thing per se; but they have very sagely opted to start taking the lead.

That’s how I found myself this afternoon, hand in hers, eyes closed. It was then that I experienced what I can only describe as a profound moment of rightness, and I was so overcome that I burst into tears and was rendered speechless.

I can’t stop thinking about it. For one, singular moment, I didn’t feel like a work in progress; or an imposter; or a woman with an asterisk over her gender. I felt like a girl; the girl I always had been and will be.

I look forward to more moments like this!

Bras are tricky!

I have one traditional strappy, claspy bra; and everything else is a padded bralette (effectively a comfy, casual running bra).

The reason I have only the one strappy bra right now is because the aforesaid straps keep falling down; and the reason the straps keep falling down is because my band is too tight. The band is too tight as, generally speaking, women with A-cup breasts rarely have a 40″ chest.

Unfortunately for me, I am an outlier in that - unlike many women - I spent a number of years accumulating visceral fat in my torso under the influence of testosterone (contributing to its unusual size); and then decided to instigate a second puberty late in life (and hence, I have two girls that are still in their initial growth phase and will be for quite some time).

(I’m not an expert, but I think most women take a more direct route when it comes to puberty.)

It’s not the end of the world by any stretch; and with time, my proportions will fall more into line with female standards (even if I’m never going to have, say, an overly girlish skeletal structure)! As with so many other transition-related matters however; the challenge is in the wait.

In the meantime, I’m just gonna keep fixing my straps throughout the day!

Spironolactone

A friendly PSA:

If you take Spironolactone in tablet form and your doctor and / or the instructions indicate it should be taken with food, TAKE IT WITH FOOD.

Studies strongly indicate that absorption of the drug is significantly higher when accompanied by food.

(This message brought to you by me, a girl that completely ignored the giant instructions on my pill bottles and took her Spiro on an empty stomach for months on end.)

The great chain

(Not to be confused with The Great Chain Of Being or The Great Chain as envisaged by Bioshock antagonist Andrew Ryan; or even Fleetwood Mac’s The Chain (although that is pretty great)!)

The start of my transition was... furtive. I imagine this is a fairly common phenomenon - trans individuals trying to build up a head of steam, as it were, before actually coming out.

In my case, I let my hair down; replaced my wardrobe with somewhat androgynous items from the women‘s section; began the process of facial laser hair removal; and painted my nails.

And it worked! These were all major milestones for me; but ones that went relatively unnoticed. (The one exception were my nails, which ended up breaking the ice with three particularly attentive colleagues.)

The first person to put all the pieces together was a barista at Starbucks. It was fascinating to experience: he had just taken our order, and was most of the way through the sentence “Have a good day-” before his eyes locked on to the crystal bracelet I was wearing and smoothly segued into “-ladies!” without missing a beat.

Later on I discovered that one of his fellow baristas was trans. At the time I really struggling with summoning the confidence to be out; and it was this particular barista that, by example, lead me to the solution: stop caring what other people think.

(Placing too much emphasis on the expectations of others is how I got into this mess in the first place!)

I make a point of thanking the people that help and inspire me (whether they are aware of it or not); and was both surprised and delighted to discover that I was now the fourth trans individual that this girl had aided.

Now that I am quite out to the world, I’m trying to pay this kindness forwards. There are trans girls I’ve run into in the wild, and I always compliment them; trans guys that have picked just the most awesome names and deserve to hear it!

There’s a young trans girl that I’ve taken under my wing, and I try to pass to her and her friends the knowledge that I’ve accumulated so far in my own journey.

I spoke with my friend Abigail about this (another individual that has done so much to help me personally); and she made the observation that one of the beautiful things about the trans community is its close-knit nature; how those that have already walked the path offer guidance to those behind them, and so on, and so on.

This is the great chain I speak of: stretching from past to future; each link a trans individual, clasped hand in hand with those before and those after them. I am so appreciative of those that paved the way ahead of me; and could not be more pleased to do my part and shepherd those that follow.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #12

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!

Clothing

It’s fascinating to me how much male and female fashion differ; and how much variety there is in the latter.

It used to be that I would buy shirts; and I would buy pants; and generally speaking, pretty much any shirt would match any set of pants. Getting dressed was limited to randomly picking out one of each.

(To be fair, one can go fairly in-depth with male fashion; and I will be the first to put my hand up and state that I did not do so, as - I now recognize in retrospect - I found the act of shopping for male clothing dysphoric.)

Now I have all these amazing pieces of clothing; but there is so much variety - so much range! - that that any one item will only match a few others (or even none at all)!

I will invariably find myself thinking: “Now I need to buy x to go with this”... And I am loving it!

A cascade of name changes

When I changed my legal name, I was required to provide public notice of the change. There are legal news services that exist for this exact purpose - you pay them a small fee; they put the notice on their website.

(At least in my county, you can request the requirement be waived; there’s a good argument to be made that it exposes one’s status as a transgender individual and that this invites unnecessary risk in today’s fraught climate. I myself did not pursue this option however.)

The website for the legal news service in my area is, uh... Well, ‘archaic’ is probably the most charitable interpretation. Sometimes I want to share the notice with people, but there’s no search function for non-subscribers - you just have to scroll through the notices until you get to the right one.

(Really, I need to bookmark it or take a screenshot or something!)

Today I was doing exactly that - trying to find my notice again - and I was struck by how many other items between mine and present day were clearly transgender in nature (i.e. from a masculine to feminine name or vice versa). I would estimate a good third or so met this criteria.

It fills a girl’s heart with warmth and hope to see so many people finding their true selves and living authentically!

Band-aids

I’m eight or nine sessions into laser hair removal on my legs; and minus some sparse patches that have so far escaped destruction, my getaway pins are now effectively hair-free.

This has an unexpected upside: Band-aids are trivial to remove.

Which is good, because I have to stick one on my leg every two weeks due to my shot!

Electrolysis

I just got done with the nth round of electrolysis on my face. My electrologist is a pleasure to deal with; the end results speak for themselves (hairs that kept resurrecting despite multiple max power laser applications - like some kind of follicular lich co-op - are now being permanently killed off); and the session fee is very reasonable.

However, I’d by lying if I said it didn’t bloody well hurt. It feels a lot like getting jabbed repeatedly with a superheated needle (because that’s exactly what electrolysis is); and unfortunately for me, one of the major problem areas is my top lip (which sucks, because that’s also a super-sensitive spot just full of little nerve bundles, ready to vociferously complain at a moment’s notice).

I’m glad I’m doing this - I’m a fan of fire-and-forget solutions - but god it would be nice to not to feel like I got hit in the face with a sack of bees afterwards!

Unexpected voice training side-effect #2

When I got my new car, I was delighted to learn that it came with a hands-free voice assistant. You press a button, and then the scene plays out as follows:

Car: Beep boop. “How can I help you?” Me: “Play that one sad song. I know, I know. That’s the kind of day it is.” Car: “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.” Me: “Play that one song.” Car: “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand.” Me: “Just cancel.” Car: “I’m sorry-” Me: “CANCEL!” Car: “Cancelling.” Beep boop.

See, as awesome as this feature is, it really struggles to understand anything I actually say.

Until I started using my girl voice.

Legitimately! I’m not sure if this is simply because it’s in a higher pitch now (and the microphone can pick it up better); or if it’s because my accent has been slipping (and the original training data was chiefly American). Whatever the case: it’s a a welcome and unexpected reward for the work I’m putting in!

Unexpected HRT side-effect #11

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!

Transition-focused

Sometimes I worry that I come across as overly focused on the subject of my transition.

“So what have you been up to?” “Oh, you know. [Transition stuff].”

In project management parlance, transitioning is a multi-year project with multiple tasks, all of which have their own sub-tasks, and so on. Resources must be acquired; unforeseeable issues spontaneously arise and must be resolved.

I would not necessarily call this timeconsuming or overwhelming (although transitioning can be these things at times); but it’s pervasive. It touches every part of my life and requires constant care and attention.

A simple example: I wanted to change my legal name. In America, this generally means going to the county probate court and getting an order to that effect.

Every county has its own process and paperwork (although the vast majority at least try to adhere to some kind of nationally-distributed model process). All together, there were five forms.

I also needed to provide notarized copies of various personal records, so I had to get those.

Once everything was submitted, I had to wait for an invoice from the local legal news publisher; and then pay them to release a statement recording the name change.

I had to talk to the court and the publisher multiple times for input on what to do; to check up on the status of my case (”Oh, sorry - the person that mails out the confirmation was on vacation for two weeks”); and so on.

Eventually the court order was created, and I could pick up my copy of this incredibly important legal document.

Having done all this...

...I now get to reach out to the dozens and dozens of organizations that keep track of my legal identity and inform them that it has, in fact, changed.

...And some of them have their own requirements for updating their records; which necessitates addressing certain organizations in a certain order (BMV; Social Security; employer)...

All of this, all of this merely to change my name. One of a multitude of tasks.

Overall, this has been one of the most rewarding processes of my life; I would repeat it in a heartbeat. If however I do come across as eternally preoccupied with my transition, it’s because - at least for now - it constantly effects me, every day and in all ways (physically, mentally, emotionally, socially, legally) and I have no choice but to dedicate the necessary brainpower to managing these things.

A year in review: 2020 edition

Looking back on my progress this year.

(To be fair, the first picture is from March of 2019 and really shouldn’t be included; but I was still so camera-shy at the start of the year there simply aren’t any pictures from that period.)

Unexpected HRT side-effect #10

 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!

Unexpected HRT side-effect #9

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!

Unexpected HRT side-effect #8

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!

Bras are cool

I went pretty quickly from HRT kicking in, to getting kind of pokey in the chest region, to buying myself a couple of bras. Altogether, it was perhaps no more than eight to ten weeks from Point A to Point B.

And I was so glad that I did. There was something so satisfying about being able to see myself in the mirror, with matching upper and lower underwear. It was... completing.

It makes me wonder if perhaps there’s value in snagging a bra before it even becomes a necessity; just for the gender euphoria / psychological comfort it can provide!

Unexpected voice training side-effect #1

I’m losing my accent.

Developing a more feminine voice is not merely a case of raising your pitch (although this is a significant component). Women also use a specific vocabulary; elongate their vowels; and vary their overall tone more while speaking.

As I’ve attempted to replicate these qualities, I’ve used my wife’s voice as my model to aim for. As she is American however, I have also picked up elements of her accent in the process; causing my original accent to fade.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #7

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?”...

Lip service

There’s only a handful of hairs left on my top lip; everything else has been obliterated via laser hair removal and electrolysis. All the same, I get pretty self-conscious about the few surviving stragglers and run a razor over them every now and then.

I just did that now, and somehow managed to lop the top off of two hair follicles (which are of course, as is their want, bleeding profusely).

HOW?! This is like playing Minesweeper with a 5 x 5 grid and literally one mine in the bottom left corner, and still somehow hitting it on the first try!

Unexpected HRT side-effect #6

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.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #5

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!

Oh no

I was doing my progesterone shot last night and the plunger in the syringe got stuck 20% of the way in. I really put some force behind but, but it wasn’t moving and I was terrified that if it did suddenly give way I’d dump the entire contents of the syringe into my thigh in a split-second.

(I’m not sure of the exact ramifications for doing so, but my nurse practitioner was quite clear during instruction that this was an undesirable outcome.)

I really didn’t want to toss the rest of the progesterone (it’s not like I had more on hand), so I withdrew the syringe and switched to a fresh needle. Poked myself again, depressed the plunger, and...

...The syringe got stuck again.

As classic “Well, what the hell do I do now?” scenarios go, sitting there with an immovable syringe sticking out of your thigh has to count pretty highly, I reckon.

I wiggled the plunger a bit and applied more force than sensible, and finally the damn thing overcame whatever the resistance was and immediately dumped half the load (so I guess I will find out why that’s a no-no in short order). Everything proceeded smoothly from there.

I’m still nonplussed as to what the issue was. A manufacturing defect in the syringe itself perhaps? Some kind of sediment in the progesterone blocking the barrel of the needle? I have no idea.

I just really hope that this doesn’t happen again...

Update 1: I talked to my friend about this and her first go-around, the needle disengaged from the syringe while it was in her leg. OMG!

Update 2: I had more soreness than usual but was otherwise okay; so I’m guessing that firehosing half the dose didn’t do too much damage, thankfully.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #4

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!

Compliments

I’ve noticed an uptick in compliments from strangers on my appearance recently, so when I went out on Saturday I decided to keep count. The final tally was six.

Now, to be fair, I recently colored my hair and it’s something of an attention-grabber.

Even before that however, I would receive random compliments from other women over the course of the week: “I love your outfit”! “I love your nails”! And so on.

It’s interesting to me because the grand total number of compliments I would receive from strangers in any given year prior to transitioning was exactly zero.

Maybe it’s society’s purview that men do not deserve compliments. Perhaps it’s a misunderstanding on my part, and the compliments are symbolic showing of gender solidarity.

I don’t know.

I enjoy that people seem to approve of how I look now; I just wish that this had always been the case.

Unexpected HRT side-effect #3

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).