Quote from: Princess_Jasmine on September 06, 2008, 11:56:26 AM
Ok so I obviously want to transition but after hearing someone's post about DVT and legs being amputated im freaking out. What is the % chance this could happen to someone and how bad is it? Are there any warning signs to prevent it before it gets bad? Does exercising daily and eating right help? Also the younger you start HRT, the lesser chance you wont get DVT in the long run like 20 years from now? God bless you all ty
Personal experience: two DVT hospitalizations, one for 9 days, one for 6 days, one and a half years apart. The second had double pulmonary embolisms, arteries from heart to lungs blocked on both sides. 26% of embolisms are diagnosed by the coroner, so I had 52% chance of dying.
It's not a joke. Passing a clot through a heart valve feels like passing a kidney stone through the heart. Not fun!
So, there I was facing death in the hospital and I realized that I would rather let the man in me die than to not live as a woman. I started hormones AFTER my thrombo-embolism experiences.
Amputations is not a major effect of DVTs: stroke and heart attacks are.
You need to read the list of contra-indicators and then learn exactly what each one means.
Estrogens promote menstruation and thereby also promote blood clotting (else women could bleed to death in any particular month). Their bodies are tuned to it by lifelong experience.
Transwomen need to use targeted delivery of feminizing hormones: through the skin application is best, as alcohol-based cremes, gels or patches.
Now a whole new can of worms is opened up: estrogen-enhanced cancers. About 10% of all types of cancers (maybe 20 out of 200 types) are estrogen sensitive and are the most deadly types of cancers.
You need to try to find out what all you can of family history for cancer, because the deadly types are known to have family runs and genetic predispositions towards getting them.
You seem like an easily excitable girl, and maybe it would be good for you to step back in fear. Some of us however have no choice but to accept the risks, no matter how high.
Ironically, because I take warfarin/coumadin for DVT prevention I am in the best position of anybody to take estrogens for feminization. I already know the warning signs and my body has the anti-clotting medicine already in the blood.
Aspirin at lethal poisonous doses will not stop DVTs in progress -- I know because I self-medicated before my second hospitalization with up to 24 aspirins per day, a toxic dose if done long-term. My blood was turning to jello by the time I went to the emergency room, with multiple clots in both legs. Aspirin was not helping, not fixing the problem.
Here's the most important facts to understand...
If you are going to feminize with hormones, then the lowest effective doses should be through-the-skin, transdermal, and applied right where you want them. Most medical advice says avoid applications to face and breasts -- but this is CYA advice to avoid lawsuits if cancer develops. If you are going to feminize the face and the breasts then estrogen has to arrive at those locations and the lowest effective doses are those put exactly where they are needed. Application anywhere else requires higher doses so that some effective amounts can migrate to where you want them, wasting some in migration.
Cancers are not reduced by applications elsewhere, just lawsuits are reduced.
Only the doctor benefits, not the patient, by applying larger-than-needed doses elsewhere in order to obfuscate proximate causality of subsequent breast cancers, because estrogen anywhere in the body will stimulate estrogen-sensitive cancers once formed.
The second most effective application is sublingual, dissolved under the tongue. This gets substantial amounts of the hormones into the blood, near the face, near the thyroid, and near the breasts. It also dodges the "liver first pass" which destroys a lot of the hormone before it can get around in the blood, which transdermal does likewise to sublingual.
Least satisfactory applications is to swallow the pill or by muscle injections (including implants). You don't get any benefits from feminizing your colon, girl, so don't take doses effective for spreading out over the entire body when there's only a few spots that really need it most. By reducing the doses to just what you need just where you need it, you can reduce chances of bad outcomes including reducing DVTs and estrogen-sensitive cancers.
All of the effects (good or bad) of lab estrogens are also caused by phyto-estrogens, plant estrogens, such as Balck Cohosh, red clover blossoms, and soy isoflavones. They just cost more than lab-grade estrogens, have unknown impurities, and may not work a tenth as good. Only girls deprived of sources of lab estrogens should go that route, or girls who don't want medical gatekeepers denying them the body shaping which they require.
Silly girls do dumb things. Becoming a woman is not rocket science. About 3 billion people have already done it or are now in the process of doing it. It is relatively safe if you don't push too fast too hard -- after all, women in general live longer than men. Spend some time to learn what you need to learn, and don't get silly, girl.
