nine-month hormoniversary, 22nd august 2013.
i look like a boy in this photo. (i’m not wearing a lot of makeup.) in some ways, that hurts worse than ever right now. in other ways, it gives me hope that big changes are ahead.
what a month this has been.
today marks nine months since i started hormones, though part of me feels like i almost should reset the counter.
i went to see my endocrinologist for a routine checkup on the first day of august. she asked how things were going, how i was feeling, etc., which she always does. i told her that i was feeling fine, but that i felt like not much had really progressed during the last few months. i’m used to being told to be patient, that things change very slowly, that i won’t even notice it. so, i had actually convinced myself that, yes, it’s just a very slow process.
the appointment included taking breast measurements — one of the few measurable ways to track the progress of someone taking hormones. the doctor told me that the growth since we last checked in april was negligible. so, she gave me a prescription for progesterone, a hormone present in the female menstrual cycle. in transgender women, it is used to help push breast growth.
the doctor also — for the very first time — ordered a blood test to check my estrogen level. i haven’t yet received an answer that makes complete sense to me about why estrogen levels aren’t regularly checked in transgender women. but they’re not. as long as the testosterone is suppressed, it apparently is assumed that the estrogen is doing its job. levels aren’t checked as long as adequate progress is being made.
so, a few days later, i walked into the lab at saint mary’s hospital in duluth and had the blood test. the result came to me via an automated e-mail message overnight. i was in bed at about 3 a.m. and my phone lit up.
my estradiol (estrogen) level was 35. i’m supposed to be in the 100-200 range. biological females have a large range, but 35 is low by anyone’s standard.
what that number means is that i wasn’t absorbing the estrogen from the patches i had been wearing for the last eight months. i wasn’t getting nearly the amount of hormones i thought i was.
at that moment, alone, in my bed, in the dark, at 3 a.m., my world fell apart.
that sounds dramatic. but most of you who are reading this know that this is the great, cathartic event of my entire life. transition is all i have lived and breathed for the last year and a half. once i realized what had to be done, i went into it full-tilt. i’ve said before that transition has a way of taking over your life, at least for a while, and that certainly has been my experience.
and so, lying there alone in the dark, i realized that so much of the energy and emotion and money and sheer will that i have put into this very most important life event has been, to some degree, wasted. misspent.
it was a setback, to say the least.
if i had been getting the hormones i should have, i might be happier today. i might be more comfortable. i might feel like I’m making true progress. i’ve talked about on many occasions how i felt like nothing was happening — and suddenly i had a test result that told me, well, yes, things haven’t gone as they were meant to. and i was really scared that i had exhausted many of my resources on a misfire.
worse, my whole sense of reality was called into question.
on those few occasions where i felt like i did notice some sort of change, was it just in my head? was i mistaken when I felt like my emotions had changed?
i went through a period of a couple of weeks this spring when i was very depressed, very anxious, very emotional. at the time, i blamed that on the hormones. did i just make all that up?
people told me they could see changes in my appearance, even when i couldn’t. were they just saying that to make me feel better?
in recent weeks and months, i was feeling as if i had grown closer to the women in my life. i felt more of a connection to them because i could understand more of what they went through. i was feeling it myself. and i felt like they had let me in, too. they were sharing more, behaving as if they saw me as one of them. was that all based on nothing?
all i have ever wanted is to be able to be taken as female at face value — not just by friends and family but by strangers on the street. mentally, emotionally, spiritually, i have been female for a very long time. but physically, there’s work to do. “passability” is very important to me. that’s not everyone’s no. 1. goal, but it’s more important to me than anything to be able to blend in, to feel that i’m part of what i’ve been missing for so long.
so, instead of the patches, which weren’t working, i’ve now switched to estrogen injections once a week. they’re pretty much the most direct way of getting the hormone into the body — through a needle into the muscle. all conventional wisdom says that this should work very well, but i’m cautious, simply because i don’t want to get too excited and find out that things aren’t going right again.
in a couple of weeks, i’ll get another estrogen test. if the number is where it should be, i’ll feel much better. i’ve always said i can wait for progress as long as i know i’m on the right path.
one bit of good news in all of this — and the reason why i am *not* completely starting over — is that the spironolactone, which blocks testosterone, has worked like a charm. i might not have much estrogen in me, but i have almost no testosterone at all. the changes that i have seen during these nine months probably have come from that, and the bit of estrogen i’ve been getting. my chest has been getting sore again during this last week, and things seem, for lack of a better term, more swollen, likely thanks to the progesterone.
so, it’s a new period of uncertainty. fingers crossed, prayers to the stars, i’ll start to see some tangible progress now. and if i thought i was emotional before, who knows what’s to come?
ok, just so i don’t depress myself completely: there have been a couple of bright spots in the past month.
i received my new driver’s license in the mail in late july. it has my new name, in beautiful, official print, and the letter “f” under the word “sex.” i can’t even describe how wonderful i felt that day. about a week later, i received my social security card with my new name.
i went to a couple of family weddings in the past month. two of my cousins were married. the prospect of the first wedding was stressful at first, because i hadn’t seen a lot of those family members since the transition became much more apparent. but my fears were quickly quelled. my family was wonderful, complimentary, and i felt very comfortable. by the second wedding, they made me feel as if i had been female all along. from something as obvious as complimenting me on my dress to something as seemingly minor as walking into the restroom with my aunt and cousins and having it be completely natural and nonchalant, i really felt wonderful. it was a beautiful experience. (it also has had me lusting after wedding dresses.)
so, i look like a boy in this photo, and that bothers me greatly, but at least i can say that with some hope that things will change at a much faster rate now than they were before. i have a perfectionist streak in me, and i want this transition to be as complete as possible. i don’t want to feel like i have to settle. but i can live with looking like a slightly boyish (boyish, not mannish) girl as long as people will always say, “yes, that’s a girl.” it’s my dream one day to be able to walk out of the house with hardly any makeup on and pass completely as female.
i’m a girly girl at heart, though, so i probably won’t let that happen too often.
anyway, i don’t know if i’ll ever get there, and it’s going to take time, and money, but i hope I can achieve it one day. to be able to be accepted at face value, to blend in truly. to be like every other woman.