Quote from: Serenation on July 15, 2015, 11:28:18 AM
Thanks for all the information HughE, you do look a feminine child.
Yep, I think so too! It shows that there's been something wrong with my hormones all my life. From the blood work I've had done and the fact that my T production has picked up quite well in response to fertility meds, it's definitely secondary hypogonadism (meaning that my testicles, androgen receptors etc are all fine, but my brain regions controlling hormones, the hypothalamus and pituitary, aren't generating a sufficient amount of the signal that tells my testicles to produce testosterone). This, alongside problems with gender identity, appears to be a really common thing among people I've chatted to with a known or suspected history of DES exposure.
My body structure, especially at that age, was much more like the female members of my family than the male ones. I think this is because there was no testosterone present during the critical period when my hypothalamus was developing, so it ended up developing as female instead of male, and has ever since been trying to control my hormones as if I were a woman with ovaries rather than a man with testicles. At the time those pictures were taken it was doing quite a good job, hence I looked more like a girl than a boy in them. However, as I got older, the fact that my "ovaries" produce mainly testosterone rather than estradiol started to show, and I developed facial hair and other signs of masculinization (although much more slowly and to a lesser extent than my brothers).
I never had any blood work done until quite recently, however from what I can remember of when I was a teenager and young adult, it seemed like my testosterone would surge up to a high level for a week or so and then crash, and I'd have massive mood swings and changes in my energy level and sex drive as a result. This continued into my adult life, except the high T periods seem to have become gradually less and less frequent and the quiescent periods longer and longer, until I had one last hurrah shortly after my 43rd birthday, and then my T levels plummeted and never came back, and I started developing symptoms of acute hypogonadism - depression, lethargy, brain fog, ED, loss of sex drive, testicular shrinkage, muscle wasting, back pain, neck pain, problems with balance and coordination, tinnitus, vertigo attacks and acephalgic migraines (those last ones aren't listed in the medical literature as symptoms of hypogonadism, however they've all cleared up since I started taking fertility meds and hormones, so I guess that's what was causing them!).
One other thing is that I was born with a hydrocele, which developed into an inguinal hernia when I was a child. I've found a paper saying that this is one of a number of conditions, all associated with the process of testicular descent, that are caused by abnormally low androgens during prenatal development. With a hydrocele the testicle does finish its descent normally, however the channel it descends through fails to close up properly afterwards, allowing fluid to leak through from the abdomen and blow up the scrotum like a balloon. In my case, a loop of intestine eventually forced its way through the gap too, creating an inguinal hernia.
As far as I can determine, mine was a normal pregnancy of a male child during the first and third trimester, but something appears to have gone catastrophically wrong with my T production during the second trimester. My life experiences and the physical and hormonal abnormalities I've had are very similar to what seems to commonly happen with DES, however I don't identify as a woman (more as a mixture of male and female instead), and it seems like I've had a lot less female brain development than is typically the case with DES. That's why I think the period of low T was limited to the second trimester, and my T production was back to normal in the third trimester (unlike with DES, when it would more usually have been low in both). Also, there was absolutely no medical reason for my mother to be given DES: no history of miscarriage, nor (according to my Dad) any medical problems during the pregnancy that would have warranted its use. My mother suffered quite badly from depression, and the conclusion I eventually reached is that she probably had a bad day, decided she couldn't handle another baby so soon after the first, and took an overdose of something (probably birth control pills) in an attempt to end the pregnancy. I'm unlikely to ever know for sure if that's what happened though.
QuoteMy mother recalls no medications while she was pregnant and my 2 year older brother had none of the issues.It is likely what you say, something disrupted testosterone production. Which is pretty much whay my endo says.
Just because your mother doesn't remember being given anything, doesn't necessarily mean she wasn't. Studies have shown that women tend to vastly underestimate the amount of medication they were given during their pregnancies. Basically they tend to forget about all the bad things that happened and only remember the joyful moments (which I guess is nature's way of ensuring the survival of the species, because if they remembered all the bad stuff, they'd probably never want to go through it again!).
With DES at least, some doctors did the right thing and contacted their patients afterwards to let them know that they'd been given it. There was also a fair bit of publicity about it at the time the link to cancer was discovered too, which made it a lot more likely that mothers would remember they'd been given it.
It could be something else besides medication of course, it's basically anything at all with the ability to interfere with testosterone production, and that probably includes things like stress, infections, industrial and agricultural chemicals, as well as genetic intersex conditions and who knows what else.
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Are T, LH and FT blood test results enough to determine secondary hypogonadism?
Total T, SHBG, Albumin, LH, FSH, free T if it's listed, ideally Prolactin and E2 too
