I want to start this by saying that I wish I could contribute financially to preserve this website and this community, I've been affected rather hard by the mismanagement of the United States, but I promise to contribute something when I get back on my feet. The archive has been such an important place for us to gather and make progress for the basic human right of being happy and content with our bodies and we can't let it go away.

I've posted a few times here about going off TRT and starting HRT. I had an orchiectomy on May 18th of this year. A few weeks before when I did my pre op lab work my Dr. included my quarterly hormone test several weeks early. By then I had tried every dose from low to super high on TRT along with an aromatase inhibitor, and I was so sick of it. I didn't like how testosterone made me feel whether it was from my testicles or from a drug. I wanted to stop taking it and go back to being castrated. I was worried about the brain fog and the fatigue coming back, but ironically most of that was from Long Covid that I recently got over. My body handled being testosterone free pretty well. I never had depression from it, and while I had to push myself at times, it was never that bad that it stopped me from anything. And from reading discussions here and asking questions here, I learned about estrogen, or HRT so I decided to give it a try. And even though I didn't take enough, or stay on it longer than a month, it was just levels better than either state that I had previously been in. Even with the long Covid still symptomatic, it made everything a little better. I felt pressured to stick with my Dr because he had just done the surgery on me and there was a really long wait to see a doctor locally for cross sex hormone therapy so I went back on TRT. I was also concerned about getting too much boob growth since I present as male. Recently the doctor situation cleared up and I'm about 8 weeks out from the appointment. So I took my last shot, threw away my TRT meds, canceled my prescription refills, and parted ways with my doctor. I've been on 3mg of Estradiol Valerate a day in a tablet form while I'm waiting for my appointment and I'm a week in, and I have already started to feel better. I can't wait until the last of the testosterone leaves my system. I'm totally done with TRT, and if estrogen doesn't work out long term, I'll go back to going natural.

So what I'm going to be asking my new doctor for is to be put on a long acting injectable estrogen that puts me in the normal female range along with Raloxifene to slow or prevent boob growth. After talking to two different clinics I feel really good about the treatment that I'll get from them when I start. Everyone has been super friendly and helpful and very interested in treating me as a eunuch needing cross sex hormone therapy. I've heard of others mentioning SERMs in their regime and I would like to hear from anyone who has had a good or a bad experience with it. I think it's being used more wide spread for non binary folks these days with good results, so I'm very optimistic.