Testosterone is a powerful drug! I wrote a while back that I had a painful side effect that started up sometime around June, if I recall correctly: very tender… uh, boobs. I mentioned parts of this last week in my clinic post, but here is the official article on the topic after the test results are in. I’d read that can happen from too much testosterone when on therapy, but the doctors said “no” to the medicine I found on the Internet as a solution to the symptom until they saw me at clinic to see what was up.
It wasn’t so much of a surface tenderness, but a semi-dense mass underneath the skin that is quite painful to any pressure at all. Sue told the doctor that he had to give a breast exam as she left the room to do more paperwork. Unfortunately, this was the first time in about 3 years that Beautiful joined me at clinic and he was startled and shot back with a quick, “what!?” as Sue quickly said, “on Jesse!”
Hilarious!
His software and my latest blood draw made him suspicious that I was getting too much testosterone because, to quote the good doctor as best I can a week later, “you’ve gained weight and now your gonads are making their own testosterone now.” Beautiful and I recalled that anorexic women go barren when their BMI is that low because the body is just in survival mode. That is what had been happening to me for… my entire adult life since I was never really at a healthy BMI.
I just so happened to not do my shot yet that day, just in the event that they needed to do a trough blood test to get to the bottom of my symptoms, which they did want and did take. The results came in today: high. Beautiful’s response was darn near, “I told you so because you’ve been quick to be mean,” which has been her plight for weeks, saying I was short-tempered and my first reaction was to be defensive and harsh. So, dudes on hormone therapy, listen to your womenfolk when they say you’re a meanie and go get your blood drawn for a trough measurement. I was over the limit at my trough, so I wonder how high I was at my peak on Saturdays or Sundays.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go watch some HGTV and cry during the reveals while I consider new color choices for our table settings.