Decidedly Obscure Human Complaints.

Hormone therapy has really impacted my sleep cycle. My body has been working over-time getting all hairy and packing on bulk. I require more sleep. Prior to starting hormone therapy I averaged about 7-8 hours of sleep per night, no problem. Now? If I get 8 hours of sleep, the next day I'm all grumbly and lethargic. But if I sleep 9-10 hours, I'm great. And the closer it gets to my next injection day, that teeters closer to the 10-hour side of the scale as my hormone supply dwindles off into metabolized bye bye land. And, no matter how tired I am, I can't for the life of me fall asleep until ~midnight. Interestingly, adolescents are notorious for over-sleeping. And not too long ago researchers discovered an internal biological clock, a clock that sometimes acts against the sleep-wake cycle by keeping us alert when we should be feeling tired. A sleep researcher named Mary Carskadon and her colleague Bill Dement had seen this biological clock in action when they teste...

My parents are gym-going rock stars this week. They both joined me at 8am three mornings in a row. Last Tuesday morning, the manager was there. The manager who, for months now, I've been trying to get up the nerve to speak with. Just enough to express to him that with the changes I'll be experiencing from hormone therapy it's going to become increasingly difficult to use the women's locker room. Yet, I'm not prepared to walk into the men's locker room. I primarily want to relay to him that he has gender non-conforming customers who have a very difficult time navigating the gym, and if there's possibly an extra bathroom somewhere. Or a unisex stall, at least. I'm trying to get up the nerve. In the meantime, I have been walking in to the men's locker room with my dad in the morning. But I've only traveled far enough to get to the sinks and the bathroom stalls. The first time we entered together, I was terrified. My heart was literally racing and ...

This is going to be a difficult post for me, as I'm not sure how to articulate any of this. But I will try. Essentially, it's becoming increasingly difficult for me to function with breasts. With each year - and each day - my dysphoria is more easily triggered by them. Once triggered, I spiral into feeling really hopeless and trapped. Relaying this reminds me of a psychologist in 1952 named John Money. He developed a 'theory of Gender Neutrality', which promotes the idea that gender identity develops primarily as a result of social learning from early childhood and could be changed with the appropriate behavioral interventions. He argued that everyone was born "psychosexually neutral". One day a baby named David Reimer was born. By way of a medical accident at 8 months, his penis was burned beyond surgical repair. Worried about the gender development of their son, Reimer's parents brought their baby to Dr. Money. As per his recommendation, Reimer...

I feel so lethargic 2-3 days prior to my hormone therapy injection day. I'm entirely unmotivated. Apparently this is what is referred to as " the valley " and it's not fun. Like all things, it seems, what goes up must come down. I have a lot of energy and motivation immediately after my injection. And it lasts for about a week. For instance, the last time I injected I ended up staying up all night working and only slept about 4 hours. And then I woke up and worked more. Then, throughout the week, I bicycled all over the place, went hiking, socialized - basically, I had a lot of energy. And then I start to putter out. putt... putt... putt... The puttiest of putt days is today. I got 10 hours of sleep last night, yet I'm feeling absolutely exhausted. My brain is feels like a muddy puddle - a fog. Uggggh.

These past couple days have been emotionally taxing. Especially because today is injection day and my hormone levels have been extremely low. I may need to ask my doctor about what to do about this. I inject every 2 weeks. I'm fine for about 11 days - but, by days 12 and 13, I'm not doing so good. I'm foggy, lethargic, sensitive, moody. I wish there was a way to administer a small dose on a daily basis, rather than a huge dump on one day that tapers off until I inject again. Transdermal testosterone is applied to the skin daily, but I'm not sure it's a viable option for me. I'll ask my doctor about it. For now, through the online grapevine I've read that changes via transdermal testosterone are slower. Which is fine for me, if it means that I don't end up feeling so awful every 2 weeks. According to Hudson's FTM Guide : Transdermal testosterone is usually applied to the skin daily in small doses in an effort to keep a steady level of testoste...

My mood was hitting some pretty wonky levels for a little bit there. Prior to starting hormone therapy, I'd heard warnings and tales of erratic mood associated with testosterone. The most I'd experienced was an increase in sensitivity a couple of days prior to my injection day . Then early May came rolling around. Next thing I knew, I started having dramatic mood shifts. I'd feel fine, then kaBam! plummet into a sordid world of low-ville. Unprecedented lows filled with self-destructive thoughts that were easily triggered. These mood plummets were hitting hard and frequent throughout May, then surfaced in little increments throughout the first couple weeks of June. Since then my mood has been stable and manageable, but it was concerning for a bit there. I'd had low moods before starting hormone therapy, but not as frequent or - more importantly - as low and extreme. I started to diligently research other hormone treatment methods, like potentially switching to using...