One year on testosterone

Today is a year on T-injections, 50ml / week.  I’d been on Androgel prior to this – from March 2013 to November 2015.  During that time, I didn’t experience many physical changes at all, which was what I was looking for at the time.  And it’s kind of the reason I stopped too – it became unclear what the purpose was, as if it didn’t make much difference whether I was on the gel or not.

So for that whole next year, I was trying to square away other elements of my transition, not sure whether I’d get back on testosterone or not.  It just felt like I wanted to get top surgery, change my name, and transition further socially before I would potentially want to pursue a level of hormones that would definitely change things in a noticeable way.  In the summer of 2016, it started to feel like the next step.  I was still pretty regularly seen as female everywhere, and more than anything, I wanted to be more firmly planted in the middle.

It took about 6 months to get an appointment and get started on injections.  I was doing intramuscular injections at first for about 9 months, and not liking it.  The need to get psyched up in order to jab in the needle was not fun.  When my endocrinologist gave me the option to switch to subcutaneous, I jumped at tat.  I am loving this method.  I wrote about making the switch here:  9 months on T-injections

I like being on this dose of testosterone a lot more than I thought I would.  The only aspects I’m not liking are the facial hair growth and the loss of a sense of smell.

I would say that I am seen as male more than I am seen as female, now.  That’s huge.  I don’t want that to tip too far in that direction, but so far, so good.  I’m still legally female, and I still almost always go into women’s bathrooms and dressing rooms.  I’ve never been stopped or questioned.

There are a lot of changes I could write about in depth, but right now I feel like focusing on my voice.  When I started Androgel, I was overly anxious about my voice changing, in particular.  I think it dropped ever-so-slightly, and I freaked out and lowered my dose even further.  And that worked – it didn’t change any further.  When I started injections, I was aware that my voice would probably be the most noticeable thing changing, early on.  And I was OK with that – something had shifted over the years.

I’m a DJ on a free form community radio station, and I’ve done an hour-long show regularly every week for the past two years.  It’s been a total blast.  And, it’s been a way to effortlessly track the changes in my voice.  When I hear pre-T recordings, my reaction is total cringe.  Which is quite the shift, since I used to want to “preserve” that register.  Now I really hate it!  And I love how it’s changed.  I can never go back, and I’m totally fine with that!

Aaaand, here’s my face:

one year

before injections