u/Due-Contact-2884

I know this is one of those questions that, I’m don’t have any intact friends to ask.

When i was young teen, maybe 12-13. I was signing up for sport, which required a physical. During the physical I remember doing the turn and cough. Everything was find, nothing herniated. The doctor also lifted my penis pushed the foreskin back, checked real quick and then moved it back in place (sorta).

I never really questioned it as i assumed he was making sure it had fully detached from the head, and was loose enough to be mobile.
Iv never had this happen at a physical again, granted since then iv never had my manhoodie examined nor the downstairs neighbors.

Is that a normal part of just having an exam and being intact as a child? I mean it’s fine, it makes sense for checking proper sexual development, and health.
Just, don’t know how many other people have had that?

Pain management says I violated my contract, but my dosing instructions don’t match

I’m dealing with a really confusing situation with my pain management clinic, and I’m worried they’re going to discharge me over what seems like conflicting instructions.
Before my most recent appointment, I was taking buprenorphine tablets 1–2 tablets twice a day as needed. My previous bottle/refills also said 1–2 tablets twice daily.
At my most recent appointment, I was verbally told I could take **1–2 tablets three times a day as needed**.
They then prescribed me **84 tablets for the month**. However, the new bottle says **1 tablet twice a day**. That’s one of the things that confused me, because 84 tablets doesn’t seem to match those directions for a one-month prescription. At 2 tablets per day, 84 tablets would last 42 days.
I’m also currently tapering off a high dose of pregabalin that I’ve been taking for about five years. Between pregabalin and my pain medication, I’ve been dealing with significant sexual side effects, brain fog, and memory/recall problems. Because I’m coming off the pregabalin and expected my pain to temporarily be harder to control, I called the clinic and asked whether they could prescribe enough for me to use the upper end of what I understood their instructions to be — 2 tablets, three times a day if needed.
Instead, I was told that I wasn’t taking my medication as prescribed and that this was a violation of my pain-management contract.
That completely caught me off guard. I explained that I wasn’t intentionally taking medication differently from their instructions. I was following what I understood I had been told during the appointment. I even drove to the clinic to show them the discrepancies between the instructions on my previous prescriptions, what I was told at the appointment, the quantity dispensed, and what the newest bottle actually says.
So right now I have:
Previous prescription: **1–2 tablets twice daily as needed**
Instructions I was given at the appointment: **1–2 tablets three times daily as needed**
Current bottle: **1 tablet twice daily**
Quantity dispensed: **84 tablets**

Any advice?

**Update**
So pain management has released me from their care stating my type of pain and flare ups does not fit within their guild lines, and they would like me to be referred elsewhere…

So for 10+ years iv dealt with unknown cause of back pain. I use to work farm land, do manufacturing and taking care of my family.
I had struggled with some back pain due to a dislocated L5. That L5 did eventually move back into place. Mri, xrays, and CT show only a very small tear in the disc below. Very small, to the point of a none issue. Iv had so many test done on me and so many injections with no results. It’s made be feel like hopeless. Over time the pains gotten so much worse and the flare ups are all consuming pain. Iv gone to the ER once due to it. No one can find whats wrong with me. I can stand, sit, or walk to long without it flaring. I cant bend, stoop, or crouch repeatedly without my back locking and hurting severely. Iv done everything im told. Iv kept my weight low, iv kept my back strong, i work out, eat right, drink water, take the meds, go through the treatment plans and nothing outside of pain killers has made a meaningful difference. I tried to look into disability but was told because i have no evidence of injury, i would need to be unemployed for a year and seek mental and physical treatment for 6months, before SS would take my case seriously…

Im feeling helpless, id lose everything and totally drain every last penny iv managed to save and then some. i feel totally defeated. Like no matter what i do now everything iv worked for this last 12 years and built up for myself was a total waste of my life. Im so frustrated, and depressed. I just wish i had some options. Im having a hard time getting hired even tho i have a good work history. Only reason i left previous jobs was due to my back… only thing everyone sees tho is a liability or a lazy lier…. Im feel defeated.

I need advice, i need a win…

ANY ADVICE IS WELCOME!!!!

29m 175 18% body fat. Slim muscular.
So far iv had five injections. I know by the fourth one iv had better energy, libido, better erection, and I’m actually getting morning wood every now, and then again.

I know morning wood and random erections doesn’t seem like much too much probably. But iv had a long period of almost completely none activity libido unless i forced it. The MW was happening due to pain and low Test.
Im actually getting REM sleep again!!! Probably not really an effect of the testosterone, but it definitely didn’t hurt it.

So weird how much it all actually bothered me when i really started noticing. Because i would wake up and after going so long without true REM sleep and low T. I realize that my groin was almost a numb feeling in the morning. Almost like when a limb goes to sleep from low blood flow.
Pain meds, and Testosterone seems to be doing well so far.
Crazy how much it starts to really matter. Like I said, I can normally force the erection through stimulation. But it would never come up on its own. It’s actually something that gets in my head now when with my boyfriend. I get so paranoid about it that I sometimes end up loosing it.
Not sure how to overcome that.
Did you all experience any boost from your injections. What was the biggest life changer for you?

Before anyone says. A-lot of your rebound sexually is dependent how long your T had been deficient. Shorter deficiency fast your body turns it back around.

Hey guys, 29M here. My total testosterone came back at 107 ng/dL, and I recently started testosterone cypionate injections for low T that my doctors believe is related to medication I take for chronic pain.
I actually started TRT a few weeks ago but stopped after my first injection because I wanted to talk everything through with my PCP and make sure I was comfortable with the decision before committing to it long term.
After talking with my doctor and doing more research, I’ve decided to continue with the injections and give TRT a fair shot.
I’ve already noticed a pretty significant increase in libido, which has honestly been nice.
For those of you who’ve been on TRT for a while, what do you wish you’d known when you first started? Anything you recommend keeping an eye on with bloodwork, symptoms, side effects, injections, or just TRT in general?
I’d especially like to hear what your first few months were like, what changes you noticed, and roughly when you started noticing them.

Not just the bad, what are some of the perks you’ve gotten from it?

Looking for workout buddy. Starting to lose motivation in the gym, due to life events. Wanted to figured id see if anyone would be interested in join around my age group.
M29. Been going for about year and half fairly consistently. I don’t really have a set time, just whenever i get there normally but that’s easily changed to fit whatever time. Shoot a response here or shoot me a DM.

I’m dealing with a frustrating situation between my PCP and pain management and I’m curious whether anyone else has experienced something similar.
After starting buprenorphine for chronic pain, I started developing symptoms like ED, low energy, poor workout recovery, and sexual dysfunction. I’ve now had multiple testosterone tests showing a pretty dramatic decline, including one as low as 107 ng/dL. With LH at 0.6
My PCP believes the buprenorphine may be suppressing my natural testosterone production. After doing my own research, looking at the prescribing information, and reading about opioid-induced hypogonadism, I honestly think he’s right.
My PCP currently wants to consider getting me off both the buprenorphine and testosterone injections, allowing my natural hormonal system time to recover, and then retesting to see what my testosterone and hormone signaling do without either medication interfering.
The problem is pain management.
I’ve repeatedly brought up my PCP’s concerns with them, but they continue telling me that buprenorphine does not affect testosterone at all. They don’t seem willing to even entertain the possibility that it could be contributing.
That’s particularly frustrating because I’m not claiming I’ve proven buprenorphine caused my testosterone crash. I’m saying there seems to be enough of a connection that I think it deserves to be investigated—especially given the timing of my symptoms and lab results.
At this point, I’m leaning toward following my PCP’s recommendation and doing a medically supervised trial off the medications so we can actually see whether my natural testosterone production recovers. The scary part is that buprenorphine has been one of the few things that has actually controlled my chronic pain well, so coming off it isn’t an easy decision.
Has anyone here had testosterone/LH suppression while taking buprenorphine? If you stopped buprenorphine, did your natural testosterone recover, and approximately how long did it take?

I’m curious whether other men with documented low testosterone had significant sleep problems before treatment.
For me, sleep has been extremely broken. I can sometimes only get around 2–3 hours at a time, I wake repeatedly, have trouble getting comfortable, and even when I do sleep I rarely feel rested afterward.
I always assumed it was mostly pain, stress, or anxiety, but after finding out my testosterone was very low, I started wondering whether that may have been contributing too.
Some of the women in my life who’ve gone through menopause have described very similar sleep problems after their hormones changed — frequent waking, only sleeping a couple hours at a time, and never really feeling rested.
I understand menopause and low testosterone in men aren’t the same thing. It’s just the closest real-life comparison I have from people around me who’ve dealt with a major hormone change.
For anyone here who had low T: did your sleep get worse while your testosterone was low, and did TRT improve how long or how deeply you slept? If so, how long did it take before you noticed a difference?

I think one of the things I’m struggling with the most is grieving the life and career I had before my back became this bad.
I had a career for almost ten years where I was good at what I did, I was moving up, and I had built something for myself. Eventually my back reached a point where I physically couldn’t keep doing it anymore. I went on short-term disability and tried going back through the treatments that had helped me before, but this time they just didn’t work. Pain-management injections didn’t get it under control, and even ablation stopped looking like a realistic option because temporarily numbing the nerves hadn’t helped enough to suggest burning those nerves would either.
Since then I’ve lost not just one career, but two. I tried moving into management at a travel plaza, and eventually my body couldn’t tolerate that either. Standing for eight hours hurts. Sitting for eight hours hurts. Lying down for too long hurts. There isn’t really a simple “just find a desk job” solution because being stationary in any position for too long becomes painful.
And that’s the part people don’t always see. This hasn’t only taken work away from me. It’s affected hobbies, socializing, opportunities, going places, and even being intimate with my partner. Sometimes my back hurts enough that I can’t even comfortably sit there and enjoy time with him, much less be physically intimate. When the pain flares badly enough, I’ve ended up in the ER, vomiting from how severe it is and unable to keep oral pain medicine down long enough to get ahead of it.
I’ve tried so much already: physical approaches, acupuncture, chiropractors, neurology, orthopedics, pain procedures, and now rheumatology because they think an inflammatory/autoimmune arthritis may be contributing. I’m several injections into an immune-suppressing treatment and still waiting to find out whether that’s going to help. At the same time I’m trying to exercise, stay active, keep myself lean and muscular, eat reasonably, and take care of my health. Physically, I’ve worked really hard not to let myself go.
Now I finally have a medication — buprenorphine — that actually gives me meaningful pain relief. In some ways it gives me pieces of my life back. But then I’m dealing with side effects and the possibility that it’s contributing to my very low testosterone, which means I’m now being treated with testosterone as well. Pain management doesn’t seem convinced buprenorphine is the main reason my testosterone fell, so they haven’t seemed particularly interested in moving me away from it.
And that leaves me feeling like I’m constantly choosing between two imperfect options. I can live with severe pain and lose more of my independence, relationships, opportunities, and ability to function — or I can take medication that controls the pain and then manage the consequences that come with it.
I think what I’m slowly realizing is that the second option may still be the better one for me. If I can take the pain medication, have my testosterone treated and monitored by my doctor, continue investigating the underlying cause with endocrinology and rheumatology, stay physically healthy, and actually participate in my own life again, maybe that’s better than avoiding medication and being trapped indoors and disabled by pain.
I’m just exhausted by having to make choices like this at all.
I’ve worked since I was a kid. This is the first period of my life where I haven’t had a job, and even though I know intellectually that I didn’t choose this, it’s incredibly hard not to feel like I failed somehow. I watched a ten-year career disappear, tried to build another one, and watched my body take that away too.
I’m trying. That’s the thing I wish people understood. I’m not sitting around giving up. I’m going to doctors. I’m trying treatments. I exercise. I take care of myself. I’m trying to understand my hormones. I’m trying an autoimmune treatment. I’m trying to control the pain without destroying everything else in the process.
I just want enough control over my body that I can work again, be intimate with my partner, go places, chase opportunities, have hobbies, and feel like I’m actually living instead of spending every day calculating how much something is going to hurt.
And sometimes all of that hits me at once and I get scared, anxious, depressed, and overwhelmed because I don’t know exactly how this ends.
But there is still some hope. If treating the testosterone helps my mood, sleep, sexual function, recovery, or even some of the pain and inflammation I’ve been struggling with, that’s progress. If the autoimmune treatment eventually starts working, that could change things again. If pain management can keep me functional while those other pieces get figured out, maybe I can start rebuilding.
I think that’s what I’m trying to do now. Not find a perfect solution, because maybe there isn’t one. I’m trying to find the combination that lets me live the most life with the least amount of suffering.

UPDATE: I wanted to share some exciting news since starting the testosterone injections. I’m already noticing improvements in areas I honestly wasn’t expecting this early. My mood has felt noticeably more stable, my sexual functions seem to be improving, and last night I slept for about 7 hours straight with much deeper, more restful sleep. That kind of uninterrupted sleep has been extremely difficult for me for a long time.

I start my testosterone replacement tomorrow. Been sitting at 107 for few weeks now. Super excited to get back to myself, and into the gym. How long till I start recovering from the drop?

Male,29,5’11,175p, 17% body fat, athletic.
I made a post similar to this however i wanted to ask a question… Buprenorphine. Ive taken it off and on for a few weeks. Maybe about a month. I took it for two weeks and noticed a large decrease and my physical activity and libido, got tested my T was at 382, i got off it and talked to my pain management who reassured me that the medication was not the cause of testosterone crash but probably contributing to low energy. So i started back on it for about a week when i started to feel like i was crashing again. I took another testosterone test and went from 382 to 107 in 17 day.
I have an appointment Monday with primary to discuss.
Im trying to decide if i should stop the medication, and how much of the crash is induced by the medication vs maybe something biologically going on. Opinions? Also whats been your experience with Buprenorphine and testosterone levels?

Im male, 5’11 in good shape at 175 with 17% body fat. I recently start buprenorphine for back pain. However i also positive it’s suppressing my testosterone. I was struggling to stay up, going through mood swings, and starting to really struggle in the gym, my sexual life pretty much died. When i was checked i had a blood draw at like 10 am, and it came back at 382. My primary told me this is low for my age, however pain management refused to see that as low. Im thinking about going to Mens Game Day, and have another test done, and possibly look at raising testosterone if needed. Any advice, comments or thoughts?

So i started these patches today, i was on the dissolve tablets and had great pain relief 10/10. However i had to break 2mg tills into roughly two to four. 10/10 no pain, felt great again. However after like two weeks on it i started getting sick, having sexual issues, a lot of sleeping, and felt pretty weak. (I was also actually sick tbf) however i tend ti have really bad back, neck, rib, and groin pain none stop. Im wondering what kinda relief i can actually expect from a 5mcg patch.