HRT

Pulling together a history of HRT in preparation for switching doctors. Posting it here should it be useful to anyone else.

Note: with the exception of the October 21, 2011, lab, all labs were one week before the appointment where the dose change listed in the next column was made. October 21 was the appointment following the October 12 labs and my endo didn't trust the result of that lab (she has since declared that both the October 12 and October 21 E labs had to be defective in light of the Feburary 2012 result.)

Total

Date	Lab result(s)	Dose change	Total dose
October 2009	unknown*	+0.05 mg/day Vivelle-Dot	0.05mg/day Vivelle-Dot (Initial HRT dose)
Jan/Feb 2010	unknown*	+0.025 mg/day Vivelle-Dot	0.075mg/day Vivelle-Dot
July 2010	unknown*	+0.025 mg/day Vivelle-Dot +200mg/day Spironolactone	0.10mg/day Vivelle-Dot 200mg/day Spironolactone
October 2010	unknown*	+0.025 mg/day Vivelle-Dot	0.125mg/day Vivelle-Dot 200mg/day Spironolactone
March 2011	E 65pg/mL T 12ng/dL	+0.075 mg/day Vivelle-Dot	0.20mg/day Vivelle-Dot 200mg/day Spironolactone
July 2011	E 109pg/mL	+2mg/day oral Estradiol	0.20mg/day Vivelle-Dot 2mg/day oral Estradiol 200mg/day Spironolactone
October 12 2011	E 76pg/mL T 37ng/dL	n/a	0.20mg/day Vivelle-Dot 2mg/day oral Estradiol 200mg/day Spironolactone
October 21 2011	E 186pg/mL	n/a	0.20mg/day Vivelle-Dot 2mg/day oral Estradiol 200mg/day Spironolactone
February 2012	E 357pg/mL T 37ng/dL	-0.20 mg/day Vivelle-Dot	2mg/day oral Estradiol 200mg/day Spironolactone
March 2012	E 49pg/mL	+1mg oral Estradiol	3mg/day oral Estradiol 200mg/day Spironolactone
April 2012	E 55pg/mL	+1mg oral Estradiol	4mg/day oral Estradiol 200mg/day Spironolactone

* T and E were tested, but the doctor did not share those results with me. My information about my actual levels begins with my final appointment with my first endocrinologist.

Where I am.

Feeling like I am and/or my life is simply falling apart, and that I should just give up. I've been in a very difficult emotional space this year. In my view it's due to the drastic HRT changes as that's when this all began. I've found myself in emotional places that I had dearly hoped I would never again visit: at different points, on the verge of being suicidal and self-injuring, both things I haven't felt for years (and, for those who knew me in my younger years, when I persistently picked scabs on my body and wouldn't let them heal, that was why I was doing it, even if I couldn't answer "why?" then because the only answer I could give - that it felt good - didn't go over well.)

I think the reason it seems so much more painful now - more painful than it ever did in the past - is because today I know something that I didn't then: what it is to not feel this way. For seven months, from July of 2011 to February of 2012, I was on a dose on which I truly felt good in a way that I never did for 30-odd years before that.

I see so many others having the happy moments - making the progress, scheduling the surgeries, and getting past that - and I'm so happy for them, but I'm also seeing that most of them started well after me and didn't have fights for something so basic. And I'm desperate for anything even beginning to resemble that kind of progress, and particularly not to suffer loss of progress like I have, because the place I'm in just fucking hurts. At least once a day, on average, I'm in tears for no other identifiable reason. I sit at work or driving home struggling to keep the tears from flowing.

This coming Saturday, May 5, marks exactly three years since I first saw a doctor for HRT. It's nowhere near that long for HRT itself; that didn't happen for five more months as that endo required that I do at least three months of therapy before HRT (which became five, and was in addition to the seven I had already done.)