Cheetaking243's Official Hormone Trial!

[Uncle Flo (imported)]

I don't mean to sound like your Uncle Flo (well, maybe I do) but I am uneasy about your depression; it has gone on too long and shows signs of worsening. I feel that you should seek professional assistance as soon as possible. If your physician will not help ask your therapist for advice or referrals. I see a dangerous situation developing and I am starting to worry about you. --FLO--

[cheetaking243 (imported)]

^It's okay. You have every right to be worried. Because so am I. And I have also noticed that it is

getting worse and worse with every single week.

And I do have an appointment with my therapist tomorrow, and an appointment with my HRT-administering doctor on Thursday, so professional help is indeed coming very shortly, and I definitely do need it, and will be ACTIVELY seeking it, because this simply can NOT continue. My very well-being is being compromised right now.

And again,

500]
it has been getting worse and worse ever
[

/quote]
since I switched to the official prescription dosage, after what was almost a month straight of feeling absolutely amazing. Here, once again, is the complete chronicle of my moods, although

this time I'm only going to post the pa

rt that started after I switc

hed to the official prescription. And again, every single depressive bout has gotten worse and worse since then, while every single period of happiness has gotten shorter and shorter.

DAY 72: Mildly bad. Dysphoric, impatient, not feeling very happy.

DAY 73: BAD. Felt like “complete and total crap.” Having some doubts, namely worrying about potential regret. (Yet, again, though, extremely happy about how I look physically.)

DAY 74: Still bad. Tired and depressed, and I was having a hard time making sense of why I didn't really feel gender dysphoria as a kid, and then suddenly as I realized just how much of my very personality was based on what others led me to do, I really started feeling empty, and wondering who I even was, and feeling like I didn't even know.

DAY 75: Really good. Happy, socially-connected, confident, “feeling great!”

DAY 76: FANTASTIC! Peaceful, “complete mental calm,” extremely self-assured.

DAY 77: GREAT! Calm, happy, peaceful, at ease, completely “free from the desires of this world.”

DAY 78: GREAT! This was my official 2nd time going out in girl-mode, and it REALLY felt good!

DAY 79: Middle of the road. Completely physically exhausted after bed-frame incident, but not too bad mentally. Still happy, peaceful, patient, and kind.

DAY 80: BAD. Mopey, melancholy, and self-critical in the morning, and then outright bout of depression by night, feeling VERY dysphoric and impatient.

DAY 81: Not very good. One of those days where I had to keep reminding myself why I SHOULD be feeling good, but just couldn't seem to focus on anything but the negatives. And then by nighttime, COMPLETELY depressed, once again feeling really dysphoric and impatient.

DAY 82: TERRIBLE in the morning! I had a complete and total anger meltdown where I ended up screaming and swearing at the top of my lungs. I had to call off from work because I felt so crappy. I felt better after that, though, so over-stress from work was a big part of this.

DAY 83: Mostly great. Felt really happy all day, starting to genuinely feel like I wasn't a guy anymore, but did have one severe bout of doubt after someone posted a topic about de-transitioning on Susan's.

DAY 84: AWESOME!!! Deep-seeded feeling of happiness and pleasure, alive, awake, so happy! So sure of myself!

DAY 85: AMAZING!!! First therapist appointment, and on this day I just had no doubts whatsoever, just so happy, and feeling like I'd finally found myself. “This is seriously the best thing ever!” I wrote.

DAY 86: BAD. Really rough day where I was once again questioning if I even knew myself because of how easily-influenced I seem to be. LOTS of doubts, and LOTS of depression. HUGE existential crisis, and this was when I posted the huge post about doubt on the EA.

DAY 87: BAD. Lots of doubts, feeling really conflicted, and really scatter-brained and unable to focus for some reason.

DAY 88: REALLY conflicted. Doubting, and feeling VERY impatient. Bitter, angry, yelled at traffic.

DAY 89: AWFUL!!! Had a c

omplete emotional breakdown where I completely cracked from the stres

s of work. Feeling awful. Feeling tense, angry, snappy, and extreme

ly unfeminine.

DAY 90: BAD. My “androgyny” day where I suddenly felt like my female presentation was too feminine. Still feeling very unfeminine, and still feeling like total crap. Ended the day with yet another complete

emotional breakdown.

DAY 91: Feeling calmer, but still just not happy on a core level. Back to feeling very “meh,” unexcited about everything, decidedly unfeminine, but at least not depressed, tense, and angry anymore.

DAY 92: Still masculine, all day. Felt good in morning, GREAT after therapy session, then HORRIBLE by night. Still angry, short-tempered, and that “threat to masculinity” feeling is back. Another depressive crying bout followed.

DAY 93: Still in “dull gray drear” mode. Can't get excited about anything, just feel tired and unmotivated, and really miss feminine happiness. Severe depression by end of day, again.

DAY 94: BETTER!!! YAY!!! After a week straight of depression, I finally felt feminine again. Not very happy, but finally back t[quote="chee

taking243 (imported)" time=1365470

700]
o feeling at peace. And had a HUG
[/quote]
E revelation about who I am and about why I've been havi

ng such severe depressive bouts, which REALLY

made me feel better.

DAY 95: GREAT!!! Feminine, back to feeling calm and happy, only feeling mildly mentally hindered.

DAY 96: WORST DAY EVER!!!!!!!!! Oh my God, just completely TERRIBLE!!!!!!!!!!! I don't even have words for it... the worst depressive bout of my ENTIRE life, broke down crying at work, had a severe fight against suicidal thoughts.

DAY 97 (today): Still feeling like complete and total crap, completely depressed. Not as bad as last night, but still just downright terrible, feeling like I've lost the ability to feel happiness on a very core level.

[cheetaking243 (imported)]

UPDATE:

The depression just broke. I don't know what caused it, whether it was the Dutasteride or not, but at about 3:00 this afternoon, all of a sudden I could feel it going away, and could feel that sense of the mental "block" and the "brain fog" easing, and I started feeling a bit feminine again, at least enough to feel back in my more androgynous state of mind. No, I am not back to feminine-happiness mode yet. I am still very much in a "meh" state. But at least I am now back to feeling like I can function on a normal level, and like it actually is possible for me to feel happiness again.

And thi

s is the first time that I have

EVER stopped a depressive bout before it spread out into consuming multiple days in a row, so I am once again suspecting that this is all just an androgenic effect, due to hyper-androgen effects following the ceasing of Androcur, which is also probably why I haven't really seen any feminizing progress whatsoever over the last 2 weeks or so. If this really is the case, then in all likelihood a higher dose of Spiro really will fix this whole damned thing. I'll find out soon enough whether this continues, and whether the depressive bout really is over or not, but I just wanted to report that for now, it finally has eased at least enough to let me functio

n on a relatively normal level again.

So, thank God, I should be able to make it through the next few days.

[~Tiamat~ (imported)]

The depression just broke. I don't know what caused it, whether it was the Dutasteride or not,

Adding dut for a couple of days will do next to nothing - it has a huge half life and is very much a "build up" drug, unless you take a huge loading dose.

http://dailymed.nlm.nih.gov/dailymed/ar ... iveid=7950

The terminal elimination half-life of dutasteride is approximately 5 weeks at steady state. The average steady-state serum dutasteride concentration was 40 ng/mL following 0.5 mg/day for 1 year. Following daily dosing, dutasteride serum concentrations achieve 65% of steady-state concentration after 1 month and approximately 90% after 3 months. Due to the long half-life of dutasteride, serum concentrations remain detectable (greater than 0.1 ng/mL) for up to 4 to 6 months after discontinuation of treatment.

It's not the dutasteride.

[foxytaur (imported)]

never doubt the power of a placebo effect. Thee mind is a powerful machine.

[cheetaking243 (imported)]

Could also just be the placebo effect... maybe I just needed to feel that feeling that I was indeed doing something about it, that feeling of being in control again, rather than just feeling like a helpless victim that couldn't do a damned thing about it other than to wait it out. That very well could be a big part of it. I don't know. This whole thing is VERY confusing. I guess I won't truly know until I can go to my doctor and get actual lab work done. I really wish I had gotten it done before I had gone on Spiro, so that I could have known if the great moods I was having were really due to lowered T or not.

[~Tiamat~ (imported)]

Lowered DHT. Dutasteride will actually increase your T marginally.

[cheetaking243 (imported)]

So, I've been thinking, and I'm starting to believe that probably

a significant portion of the d

epression that I was feeling was also just due to the placebo effect... a cumulative effect of everything that's happened so far.

Before it even started this trial, I was expecting that I would experience greater happiness while having lowered T and raised E. So when I started taking Androcur and Climara, I IMMEDIATELY started feeling a sense of extremely-heightened happiness, which was amplified to such a degree that it simply could not have been due to the drugs. And then likewise, when I switched to Spiro, because I knew from the start that it would not be as effective, I was priming my own mind for depression to happen. Again, it's kind of the "self-validation" thing where my mind is looking for any sort of feedback to validate my feelings, and therefore as soon as I start feeling anything like it, I start saying "AHA!!!" and dwelling on that depression, and then because I am dwelling on it, it keeps getting worse and worse. Sa

me thing with the happiness. It's a p

ositive feedback loop. The more I think about it, the more I recognize the feelings. The more I recognize the feelings, the more I think about them. Until my happiness suddenly becomes so happy that I feel like my head is going to explode, and my depression suddenly feels like there is no hope left in the entire world.

Admittedly, I seem to have a VERY powerful mind in regards to this kind of thing. If everyone remembers correctly, even before I had taken a single pill, just the knowledge that I was embracing my desires as a transsexual began making me feel different... more feminine, and I started feeling some physical changes before I had even started taking a single pill. And likewise now, just the thought that I might be making negative progress has sent me into a self-induced depressive spiral. The same thing happened in high school, and the same thing happened in college. I was VERY good at convincing myself that I was cured of transsexualism, and very good at making myself also feel euphoric about the Christian "happiness." And I've been very reluctant to admit it, but let's be honest, it's the same damned thing. It was just me telling myself that

I was supposed to be feeling the

happiest that I ever have been, and so it became so.

And, well, just based on how quickly I was able to get over these depressive feelings, which felt completely hopeless just earlier today, and then suddenly disappeared as SOON as I felt like I was doing something to take control of it, I'm willing to bet that this entire depressive bout was completely in my head. And so have been all of the bouts of extreme happiness and extreme depression that I have felt over the last three months.

The proof that it really has been working is in the pudding. Based on photographic evidence, which I have thankfully been keeping since day 1, I have indeed made a LOT of feminization progress. So my T levels have indeed dropped, and my E levels definitely are up. And I do still suspect that my T levels have recovered somewhat recently, since for the last 2 weeks I have pretty much seen no further feminization progress. But let's be honest. I'm over-exaggerating it. I am still on an anti-androgen, and I am still on E, and I am still on Finasteride to go with it, so come on, my T levels are still reduced. And they're going to stay reduced. So I am SERIOUSLY overblowing this whole thing. I need to just chill, and quit looking to my moods for validation. I know for sure that I am transsexual now, and I no longer need positive or negative feedback from hormones to either confirm it or deny it. So I need to just chill.

That's about it. Again, I'm feeling pretty stupid. I have seriously been a drama queen during this entire HRT regiment, and as such I have really put myself through a lot of hell. I REALLY should have gone to the therapist first, and been secure in my gender identity before starting this, rather than trying to rely on the hormones to give me positive or negative feedback. The positive feedback does not prove that I am transsexual. But just the mere fact that I was so desperate for positive feedback in the first plac, that does indeed prove it. And so does the extreme degree to which I was fighting against my doubts, saying "NO! I am NOT going to quit!" That also proves it. And now I do know. Now I do have a completely solid foundation to build my new identity upon. And so I don't need this superficial up-and-down moods to prove it anymore.

Anyway, rant over. Now that I believe that

the depression is just the plac

ebo effect, odds are that it really isn't going to be coming back. And I'm not going to keep taking the dutasteride. I don't need it, and I didn't need it in the first place. This is all in my head.

You know what I really nee

d to do? I need to quit keeping a daily journal, and get on with my life. The whole reason I started it in the first place was to chronicle my moods and my emotional journey as HRT progressed. But well, I feel like it has served its purpose now. All it's doing now is making me check my moods on a daily basis, which gives me that internal need to "prove" that I am transsexual to myself

. Well, again, I'm past that no

w. I know I'm a girl, I know that I'm going to keep going until my physical body matches t

hat internal reality, and the rest is

just a matter of getting to that goal. I no longer have a need to talk about my moods on a daily basis.

So yeah... I'm going to quit. I'm going to quit journaling daily, quit focusing on my moods so damned much, and just get on with my life. I'm WAY behind on a lot of things that I've wanted to do for a while, I need to get back to being myself and doing the things that I have always enjoyed, and catch up on some SERIOUS writing. This HRT regiment and journey of self-discovery has given me SO much material to work with for my stories, I'm just itching to get back to them.

So, yeah... once again, this is probably the end of my daily stretches of constantly writing these logs. I'm going to scale them back, maybe only do a weekly update, focus on the physical progress and the personal triumphs rather than my moods, and get back to my life.

Again, thank you everyone for your support. Sorry about all of the drama.

Love you all!

-Carrie

[foxytaur (imported)]

You are who you are cheetaking. I belive you are a woman on the inside and outside.

Chemicals ,unless they are drugs like meth and crack, can take possesion of you.

You are strong cheetaking. Hehe.....I'm glad that you figured out why I disprove hrt cant overide your mind. It really is all in the brain.

And while I do belive hrt has a good effect on the brain. It is what it is. Serves as a potent amplifier to what you are feeling and what you presume you will feel afterwards.If anything Estrogen made you embrace and let out your inner woman from your subconcious tht as a male you were too afraid to let out.

In summary youve always been you.

[foxytaur (imported)]

Im surprised you haven't started a new thread yet. Should close this one and label the new header.

Cheetakings real life experience. This ain't no trial, it's the real dealios!!!!!!!