ugh, I’m trying to find that meme of an anime girl eating pizza captioned with something like “how I eat pizza knowing estrogen sends it to my boobs and butt”

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Wondering if any of you have advice? 🙏🙏🙏

is … is this a call for help?

oh nice, thank you! as someone who dumpster dives and eats off the floors all the time, this is good advice 😂

Here’s a video I found that answers a lot of questions about vaginoplasties: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDOtejnYWAU

was pretty helpful, I should probably re-watch it soon

sus

🤢🤢🤢

yes, you get it!

And completely agree that you’re already gross from running, it’s just socially faux pas so I prefer to wait until I’m not around others to do it (if possible, if I’m really suffering I’ll just do it anyway 🫠).

Cover one nostril with finger, then blow very hard (try to aim for the ground and not on your clothes), then reverse which nostril you cover and do the same.

It’s really gross, I try to only do it when no one is around, but it is useful.

thank you so much!! I had not considered the power bar, and I haven’t planned audiobooks and podcasts but those are great ideas!

On the donut pillow: for clarification, I keep reading and hearing contradicting advice about the donut cushion / circle pillow - most advice is that it’s the wrong thing to sit on post-op (that it increases pressure on the wounds rather than relieves it, but that it’s also a common mistake that people use it or are suggested to use it).

In one of my pre-op appointments they explicitly told me first of all that I should basically avoid sitting at all costs, never sit pre-op (only lie down flat for up to 2 hours, otherwise try standing), and if I have to sit e.g. in a car to get home, put the seat all the way down to lie down as much as possible and to always use a waffle cushion and not a donut cushion / circle pillow. That’s what I was told by my physician’s assistant last week anyway. Just passing along in case.

I think the no sitting rule is to prevent pressure on the sutures and thus to prevent wound dehiscence.

penile inversion, and I’ll be in the U.S., I will only have to drive to a different city.

When it’s bad enough I learned to do a “farmers blow”, which is admittedly super gross - but it’s effective at clearing my nose and doesn’t require bringing tissues (esp. useful when I am cycling or running in bad weather).

I would see if you could get a referral to an endocrinologist that your local trans community recommends, and then ask them your questions. Unfortunately doctors are generally clueless about trans healthcare, though, so educating yourself first is a necessity.

I think most doctors will tell you that estrogen will make you permanently infertile, but you should take this with a grain of salt. I’m not sure how many will know that trans women have regained fertility when pausing HRT.

in particular start with this article: https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/

we don’t know if drags pronouns are trolling or not, we respect them on principle whether drag is trolling or not; the fact that drag has done nothing but troll actually seems like evidence drags pronouns could also be intended to troll, we just avoid saying that part out loud because it shows skepticism of their identity, and we want to be respectful of people’s self-identities here (a kindness that ironically drag does not do extend to others)

this is my last week of electrolysis! 🥳 Only a few weeks left until surgery.

I am fairly nervous, I have had only a couple laser sessions and fewer than 20 hours of electrolysis … but the surgeon seems confident and they do follicular scraping (they told me they can realistically get around 50 hairs during the surgery, I think they individually cauterize each of the follicles on the skin graft).

and either way, the joke is that the drama of the body is unexpectedly literal and her death is thus like a good show being cancelled

tl;dr

in Victorian times the author wanted to warn people about the arsenic in wallpaper and its dangers, so he published a book of wallpaper samples with arsenic that then itself poisoned and killed people who handled the book

🩷🩷🩷

yes, thank you for making sure I saw it!

It definitely gets the idea across. It’s disturbing to me that a video like this even needs to be made, it makes me want to study how things got to this point, why people view sex differently, etc.

Basically, how long would you have to be on estrogen before you could start getting some of the mental and emotional effects, but before you would start having any irreversible physical effects?

I had emotional effects within the first week. For me I think injecting a sufficient amount of estrogen to block the testosterone from being produced is what helped my mood.

The testosterone was the problem, and the only anti-androgen I tried was bicalutamide which didn’t help because it doesn’t block androgen receptors in the brain very well. It was previously thought to have no effects on the central nervous system, now we know it does act on the CNS but it’s not clear how much. Either way, I can confirm bica didn’t help my biochemical dysphoria at all.

I have heard spiro can help with biochemical dysphoria (it helped Mia Violet), but can also harm mood (I know several trans women IRL who swear it causes problems for them).

So I would personally recommend estrogen monotherapy. The ideal would be lupron, but it’s too expensive, so until an orchi is possible I think monotherapy is the least medically risky (estrogen is very safe, even in high levels), the option with the fewest side effects, and the most feminizing.

Also, mood continued to change and improve over time, and figuring out the right dose took a very long time for me. There were mood changes happening at the 3 month mark, and the estrogen does actively change your brain. I remember distinctly my intrusive anxiety disappeared somewhere in the 3 - 4 month mark.

I am pretty interested in starting HRT, but I don’t necessarily want to go through the whole hassle of freezing sperm first if I end up not liking how HRT makes me feel. Nor do I want to wait a long time before starting HRT just to find out that it me feel like garbage. So I’m thinking about potentially taking it for like two or three months as a “trial run”?

This seems reasonable to me. Depending on dose, frequency, and route of administration, you might have some breast growth that starts around that time that could be irreversible, that is the main risk. I think stopping within two months rather than three months should avoid that, however.

I believe it is actually recommended by The TransitionChannel to try HRT first since you can stop before permanent changes around the 3 month mark.

General recommendation is that you freeze sperm first, it is a risk you will lose fertility. However, it seems to be a bit of a myth that you will permanently lose fertility, most women seem to regain fertility when they stop HRT.

You should really think through the possibility that once you start estrogen you will not want to ever go off of it, even to regain fertility. I vastly underestimated the effects of estrogen on my mood, and once I started, the thought of quitting was tantamount to suicide. It was actually unsafe for me to quit. I don’t know what it will be like for you, though.

I do highly recommend injections rather than oral or sublingual routes though. I have needle phobia, so I went with subcutaneous injections with very small needles that are painless to inject.

I also recommend reading this document a few times: https://transfemscience.org/articles/transfem-intro/