Well I have had some luck, finally, after about 7 months of banging my head against the wall. I had to go through 2 different GPs and 2 different urologists and it took a LOT of pressure to get the second urologist to agree to removal. But it's finally planned for February 1, a little over a week from now.

The relative inability to get things done safely and legally (not to mention honestly) in Europe is a serious problem. I'm sure I'll run into even bigger obstacles when it comes to sack removal...and penectomy...forget it. I'm thinking Thailand for the latter, but even that isn't straightforward.

I don't know the background of these two people, so I can't comment too much on this. But I hope that they're actually qualified to do what they're doing. There is a huge need for these services, and as long as these needs aren't met, people will turn to other options.

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Na, Greylayer, wie geht's?

Give us an update, please. Did you get the surgery finally done?

Where in Germany are you based? I might be able to assist in your quest....no promises though.

Halt die Ohren steif, wenn der Rest schon nicht mehr....

Danke, aber mein Problem ist weg.

http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=17396

I'm curious what the German's say the normal range for Testosterone is. Most of the Socialized medical systems seem to have some screwy ideas on this.

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Mon Oct 12, 2009 2:30 pm Hi all,

Has anyone here had experiences with the German medical system trying to get the nuts removed? Here's where I'm at right now. Beginning in about mid-spring I have destroyed most of my testicular function, and now I'm on Siterone to top off my efforts. Things are going very well with the low testosterone levels (though I may wish to be on a small dose of something androgenic in the long run to avoid strength and bone density issues). As a side benefit, the low-grade chronic nut pain has been much reduced, though the large floppy sack is really annoying. And the total lack of erections? Great. I feel totally myself in a way that I never had before, though my boyfriend does miss some of the kinkier aspects of me.

The question is, how could I make this permanent? I went in to the doctor's over the summer with the damaged nuts; the urologist did an ultrasound and grumbled a lot and looked very concerned...then told me I was fine and to go home (with a 'normal' T level of 191 at the time, now much lower, and no blood markers for cancer). If I were to go in again, how would I be able to convince a doctor that having a pair of dead gnarly nuts in my sack is not in my interests, or theirs? Or is there any other option where I can have them, and preferably my sack, removed? I know that Thailand's clamping down on anything elective, and I know of nobody who does elective procedures in Europe, though there are apparently some in the US if you inquire persistently enough. I can actually probably get letters attesting to my sanity; the hard part is finding a surgeon anywhere in the world (especially in Germany) who will do the dirty work. Their thinking is, if it isn't bleeding or obviously cancerous or gangrenous, they don't want to remove it.

The ultimate goal here is nullo but I'm willing to work incrementally, and there is NO way that a German doctor would nullo me. I had a chat with a gender therapist who thought I was the strangest person in the world for wanting this....I don't think that they recognize Jesus's M2E standards quite yet on this side of the pond. So that option is out.

I definitely need a new urologist (for all kinds of reasons); when I go see one, how should I approach this? I've been driving my T levels as low as possible but the 'normal' range in Germany is absurdly wide and the tests they use so imprecise. Alternatively, has anyone had any luck with Thailand in the past year or so? I know they've been clamping down pretty hard lately, but if I can find someone good there, I can do my one-stop shopping and maybe get a good vacation out of it. Either way, I'm open to ideas.

It varies from lab to lab. The way that a 'reference' range is set up is pretty screwy; it isn't based on physical health or anything. What they do is they test a bunch of people and set up a 95% coverage interval. It's basically a hypothesis test on the null hypothesis that someone is at a normal range.

This is completely moronic. A noisy test will give an absurdly wide confidence interval that has nothing to do with health and everything to do statistical noise. I think that's what happened in my first case. The reference range went from 167 to somewhere high. I switched doctors and suddenly 191 was low (I was at 87 by the time, yeah, I'm an overachiever. ). More precise lab, smaller reference range.

A test should be based on the consequences of falsely not rejecting the null vs. the consequences of falsely rejecting it. Better yet, we can get all Bayesian and assign posterior distributions to things and work from there. In that case 191 should be cause for alarm but it would mean that someone's T range is more likely in the (making up a number) mid 200s somewhere with a fair chance of it being low too.

The first doctor's reaction when I told her 300 was about the min range for normal?

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:48 am "You can't believe everything you read on the Internet."

She went on to recommend something homeopathic. I walked right out.

Combine statistical illiteracy with arrogance and you'll get some truly amazing stuff.

Now they want to do this to us.

I could not live without my testosterone wow in Germany and USA even castrate levels of testosterone almost are considered normal wow!

WOW!

So what type of HET are you on?

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:01 am It varies from lab to lab. The way that a 'reference' range is set up is pretty screwy; it isn't based on physical health or anything. What they do is they test a bunch of people and set up a 95% coverage interval. It's basically a hypothesis test on the null hypothesis that someone is at a normal range.

This is completely moronic. A noisy test will give an absurdly wide confidence interval that has nothing to do with health and everything to do statistical noise. I think that's what happened in my first case. The reference range went from 167 to somewhere high. I switched doctors and suddenly 191 was low (I was at 87 by the time, yeah, I'm an overachiever. ). More precise lab, smaller reference range.

A test should be based on the consequences of falsely not rejecting the null vs. the consequences of falsely rejecting it. Better yet, we can get all Bayesian and assign posterior distributions to things and work from there. In that case 191 should be cause for alarm but it would mean that someone's T range is more likely in the (making up a number) mid 200s somewhere with a fair chance of it being low too.

The first doctor's reaction when I told her 300 was about the min range for normal?

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Sun Nov 22, 2009 9:48 am "You ca

graylayer02 (imported) wrote: Tue Feb 09, 2010 11:01 am n't believe everything you read on the Internet."

She went on to recommend something homeopathic. I walked right out.

Combine statistical illiter

acy with arrogance and you'll get some truly amazing stuff.

WOW!

dancinggizmos (imported) wrote: Wed Feb 24, 2010 2:50 am So what type of HET are you on?

HET? I'll assume it's a typo and you meant HRT; please correct me if you mean something else.

Now I'm on 250 mg of T every 2-3 weeks but we're going to switch to something slower-release under the name Nebido. The LH counts are back within a normal range, indicating that my brain is no longer missing T.

The funny thing about the system we have here in Germany is that it's basically Hillarycare with some additional Obamaesque stuff thrown in, for those of you old enough to remember that. Doctors are private and you can choose among them. But there's 'managed competition' plus an individual mandate in the insurance market, with big discounts for poor people. I pay about 15% of my gross salary in the form of health insurance payments. Prices are capped by law, and insurance companies compete based on how invisible they can make themselves to you, the customer. Health insurance is the one place where I've had no problems with customer service.

This has all had several effects. It's gotten universal coverage and the ER is an unheard of institution, and there's a lot of patient choice which is essential; in general my new GP is fairly good though it took some work. But the Germans have 'bent the cost curve' by cutting back on things like cleanliness, service, and competence. Waiting rooms and recovery rooms are crowded, doctors underpaid and overscheduled, and this interacts with the laid-back German culture (no, really, they are!) in odd ways. And middle-income wage earners are really getting pinched because they're subsidizing everybody else's health care, and Germany had a bigger baby boom and then bust than did the US. This is beginning to hit really hard, and it will begin hitting the US soon.

Health insurance serves two major functions: Actually insuring against unforeseeable one-time things, like a car crash or house fire, and acting as a transfer system between well-off people and sickly people. The Germans have combined both of these things at great expense while the Americans can deal with the first thing well (since this is something that people can do voluntarily) but are debating on how to deal with the second thing for people who aren't destitute or elderly. The second thing is really about inequality and how it relates to health, and that is what universal coverage + mandates + guaranteed issue is about. Young workers are the biggest losers in this process, while cancer patients, illegal immigrants, and 64 year olds are the biggest winners.

But the German system is arguably more private than the American one (where the government itself paid about half of all health care costs, last time I checked). Those crazy socialists. :p