u/floplet

Hi, her estrogen is 40 pg/mL (150 pmol/L) and she's nearly 8 months hrt. Her testosterone is suppressed fine (GNRH agonist)

Her boobs don't have the pointy early-transfem shape, they are floppy (is that more like gynecomastia?) She's only just started to get nipple pain, and not much. She's had no changes to her face (of course)

She can't go diy because she has other health problems and her doctors for that need to know she's seeing a "proper" endo for her transition. I managed to talk her into taking extra estrogen between endo blood tests, dropping to the endo dose 1 week before them so that they could see they still weren't giving her enough

But her endo blood results were exactly the same as her results on extra estrogen (she did a private blood test when she was on it). Maybe endos use some kind of proxy to discern current E level, and that proxy takes a while to reflect current level?.. or maybe she never took the extra estrogen at all, i don't know. She seems strangely reluctant to get into the WPATH range for estrogen (100-200 pg/mL 350-700 pmol/L)

When the results came back the same, i figured that the half-diy thing was too complicated and told her to just get a different endo, but she doesn't want to. I don't understand her really, she seems more interested in getting into 3d printing than in her hormonal transition (?)

At this point I'm just thinking "you do you".. I tried to help and she doesn't want it. But will a long period way below the WPATH range affect her transition long term, or will she develop normally once her levels are in range? The floppy boobs are lowkey worrying but i haven't mentioned them

(At her endo's current rate of increase she won't be in range until after the 1y hrt mark)

Hi. Got a strange problem

CONTEXT

Until recently my (tf 2y hrt) best friend (tf 5 months hrt) was being underdosed by a bad endo: full T suppression by GNRH agonist (triptorelin aka decapeptyl), but only 2 squirts of estrogel daily. He believes in the silly "slow increase" method

Her estrogen level was only 68 pmol/L 6 hours after gel use (about 19 pg/mL in american units). She was literally in the menopause zone and getting hot flashes. I told her about DIY, and she decided to add 2 extra squirts a day. She wants to stay on this dose and monitor its outcome with private blood tests

For her official endo blood tests she will temporarily drop to his silly low dose a week before the test, so that he can see that his dose is.. silly, and hopefully he'll increase it

Of course many of us would get another endo, but my friend can't afford.. and she can't go full diy because she has other health problems and her doctors treating those want to see someone "responsible" managing her hormone transition. So we came up with the hybrid endo/diy idea

PROBLEM

When she was just on 2 squirts she had really bad aching pain in her arms that was making it difficult to sleep at night. She's convinced this was related to the underdosing

Since adding 2 more squirts diy 2 weeks ago, the menopausal hot flashes have stopped, but the arm pain is still there, as bad as ever. She's still convinced it's related to the underdosing she was experiencing, because it started at the same time

But in 4 years on askmtfhrt and transdiy ive read posts by a lot of underdosed girls and never seen pain in arms ever mentioned as a symptom of underdosing

Is it actually a thing that some underdosed transfems do experience? Or might she have some other problem?

Thanks for reading, i want to help my friend so much 💛