Well after exactly one year to the day from my 'uh-oh..." moment I am clear to start HRT. This coming monday. So yay.
But I would like to hear your stories about your first pill. Did you wait for a special day? Have a ritual? Neck that little biatch as fast as the chemist could hand it to you?
Quote from: Emmaline on May 05, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
Neck that little biatch as fast as the chemist could hand it to you?
Before walking out of the Pharmacy. Sure gave him his laugh for the day! :)
I wasn't as bold as Jessica, lol. Still took them promptly, though.
After I left the pharmacy with my pills I took them as soon as I got in my car. Swallowed my spiro and stuck an estradiol tab in my cheek.
I've pretty much felt the best I have in my entire life since then - there is no reason to wait for some special occasion - getting your hormones is a special occasion. Why delay something so great?
I get my lady juice via injections... i remember the first shot... I did not even mind the prick.. i swore i could feel the estrogen flowing out of the needle.. i was so excited to start my new life.
Quote from: noleen111 on May 05, 2014, 10:17:43 AM
I get my lady juice via injections... i remember the first shot... I did not even mind the prick.. i swore i could feel the estrogen flowing out of the needle.. i was so excited to start my new life.
I switched to injections almost 3 weeks ago - I definitely prefer it to sublingual estrogen. I feel more stable, for sure, not to mention the much increased breast tenderness, hot itchyness, breast pain, etc. I'll be injecting myself again tomorrow.
Quote from: Emmaline on May 05, 2014, 09:11:32 AM
Did you wait for a special day?
For me, getting them *was* the special day!!
I do remember setting all of the bottles out on the counter when I got home that day and just looking at them for a few minutes before taking them. Taking a deep breath and thinking "this is it".
It was such a good day! :)
After getting my script to fill I raced to the nearest pharmacy and filled that thing out!
Once I got my pills I ran to my car and popped both in my mouth! Drove the rest of the way home so euphoric!
August 20, 2012
still have the picture of the first little pill sitting on the computer desk
Patch, but I stuck it on as soon as I got home. :)
Yup. Didn't wait to go home before taking my pills. Had to take them on the drive home.
I was going to take them in the Pharmacy, then in the paring garage, than as soon as I got home. I thought for a few hours, 4 or 5, "are you really sure" yup.
so how fast can you say Rumpelstiltskin
October 3rd 2013, a yellow progynova pill. Still have the photograph of it in my hand :)
It's a great feeling :)
NO DOSES
Quote from: AmazinglyAutumn on May 05, 2014, 11:35:31 AM
For me, getting them *was* the special day!!
I do remember setting all of the bottles out on the counter when I got home that day and just looking at them for a few minutes before taking them. Taking a deep breath and thinking "this is it".
It was such a good day! :)
I did the same thing, it took me a minute to take it all in before I took my first pill. From there the journey began! I felt like I was on a cloud for the rest of the week
I remember I had been putting off getting on HRT for about a year. Well the day passed when it was the 1 year point that I called the therapist for my first appointment, and since LSU never called me back to set up a dr appointment, I ordered online. About a week after that I went to the DMV to take my last male picture ID. I looked at it and said "This will be the last license I have where I look male". Well, that was true! A week later I got my drugs and popped em in as soon as I got them.
Here's a picture of me with my first E pill in my mouth under my tounge, taken on August 19th, 2011:
(https://www.susans.org/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fs27.postimg.org%2Fa43gxxzwj%2F2011_08_19_17_12_04.jpg&hash=6520413d169d12bac932e0efa96d1b859da7dd73)
Oh, and for the record, 2 weeks later I called a private endo and set up an appointment to get on something I could get from a pharmacy ;)
i first started with injection & pills together when i was around 19 .... i got all info from my senior trans friend .. and yes, i was so excited to start a journey with that my 1st pill lol .. and from that moment, my life had changed drastically in a better way i wouldn't expect it to be ;)
I waited a day before taking it unlike all you others who couldn't wait 5 seconds.
Looked at the box that night and made it to lunch time before going WTF.
Must be something wrong with me.
Oh that's right I'm trans. :D
What a wonderful feeling such a little blue m&m can make.
J
Can't remember my first first time...that was well over twenty years ago. No doubt I was extremely impatient to get started.
My second first time was perhaps tempered by that experience, as keen as I was to get started I knew a couple hours wasn't going to make any difference in the grand scheme of things...waited until I got home and had dinner before popping the pill.
The moment I got home and shut the door behind me
March 20, 2004 was when it was. Took one as soon as I got home.
I looked at the pill nervously for quite and while and went back and forth in my mind about whether I really wanted to take it. I finally thought "what the heck" and down it went.
I read all the material on each package, bottle and pamphlet before i carefully decided what time in the morning,and afternoon I wanted to take my pills. I decided on 6:30 because thats roughly breakfast and dinner for me. I think I waited a total of 30 minutes lol
I think it's gonna be a down the hatch moment for me.
Roll on monday!
Good luck for Monday Emmaline.
I will be interested to see if you get the fantastic feeling of empowerment, joy and relief it did for me.
It's hard to put in words that describe it so enjoy the emotional high I am sure you will feel. :)
J
Got my first on a Monday too!! July 6, 2009. I got mine at a hospital pharmacy and hit the cafeteria for a glass of Iced Tea, and down the hatch!! (Found out later I could have taken it sublingually which I do now). It will be 5 years for you before you know it, much happier and, yeah happier.
In Australia you get birth control for HRT, which led to me getting the talk from the Chemist about my chances of getting pregnant if I miss a pill and how to go about getting the morning after pill. I didn't have the heart to tell him I wont be getting pregnant. It was almost an out of body experience.
Injection for me, so I was a bit out of the loop about the exact timing :)
Before that first injection I got a lot of are you really sure you want to do this? stuff. I'd woken up that morning thinking do you really want to do this? and despite a certain amount of fear about taking the first step down the physical transition road, the answer was a very definite yes so no hesitation.
I have a picture we took 30 minutes after that injection and it's all over my face just how happy I was about doing it.
I took it as soon as I got them. I was anxious to get the prescription, anxious to get the pills and I was not going to give any time waiting to take them.
I got mine the day after Christmas 2013. I had waited sooooo long for this down the hatch they went -all three of them on December 26th, 2013. My ticker below is actually 2 days behind. Then on day three I was awash with calm and amazement, my final journey had finally began................. :eusa_dance:
Ally :icon_flower:
Huge day!
First ever cronut!
Oh... and started HRT a few seconds before!
;D
I feel fantastic.
Good for you Emmaline.
Feels good, no?
Did Dr H warn you about the side effects from the full moon?
J
Quote from: Emmaline on May 11, 2014, 10:54:20 PM
I feel fantastic.
Wooooo! Hope you don't have to wait too long for some action in the boob department! ;D
Psychosomatic or not, I have to say I have not experienced things like today. Vivid colors, depth of spacial awareness and a sort of evenness- expanding evenness.
If this is depression lifting a bit, thats great. If its hormones firing off receptors... great.
Frankly, if life is more like this I think things are going to be okay. Boobies or not. :)
Sigh.
No that's the stuff that goes in the Sydney water... ;)
Quote from: Emmaline on May 12, 2014, 05:41:02 AM
Frankly, if life is more like this I think things are going to be okay. Boobies or not. :)
Ah Yes you'll soon notice a calmness in your mind probably around the third day -oh and booby development sure helps you know your on your way. Expect soreness, a lot of it, lol!!
Best wishes :icon_bunch:
Ally :icon_flower:
Thanks all :)
Will I have to come over and tie you up and give you a tranquilizer?
Might help and I might enjoy it. :laugh:
Give it a couple of days before your chest start to come alive!
Other changes take time but are so amazing.
Don't mention the mind.
It was almost a year and a half I had to wait since coming out to myself before I could finish jumping through the hoops and escape the waiting lists. I had been extremely anxious through that time because I felt physically and mentally terrible but was taking an enormous leap of faith that HRT was going to help me feel better - Hope was the only thing carrying me along. I also had to come out to many people and commit fully to the process without being certain I'd feel better.
When the day finally arrived that I got my first prescription (started Spiro only first) it was such a relief to know I'd made it through that 'marathon' that I was actually feeling almost completely calm and at peace with myself for the first time in many, many years. The pill itself was almost a non-event - I headed straight for the pharmacy and then took the pill immediately in a nearby coffee shop. Within 48 hours I was feeling extraordinarily serene about 2.5 hours after taking my daily dose. Very quickly things smoothed out so I just felt continuously better. It would be two more months and an increase in Spiro in between before I got clearance for Estrace. That felt more like a right of passage, but by then it didn't have so much of a mental effect - it mainly marked the beginning of long-awaited physical changes.
Sometimes I wonder if it is more meaningful in most respects to state my HRT start date as the beginning of E rather than the two months earlier with Spiro. It seems most people on Susan's are referencing this because it is more common to start E first or both together. In this way my physical progress might better align for comparison with the timelines reported by others. I'm also still going through a slow but steady dosage ramp-up that may take another four to six months to complete. Perhaps a more important statistic to go by would be that by 7-months Spiro and 5-months Estrace, and not yet having reached what my doctor would consider the target dosages, I could at least report that my hormone levels had entered comfortably into the normal female ranges.
Looking back I have absolutely no regrets about going on HRT and I've felt generally better and more comfortable than I ever have my whole life. What it represented for me was moving forward with my life after decades of wasted time stalling and falling apart. I know that for a lot of trans-people it feels like a huge right of passage or validation of your gender. I don't dispute the validity of those thoughts but it wasn't quite like that for me - it was pure relief and freedom from hopelessness - my one golden opportunity to live my life as freely and genuinely as I'd never dreamed I could. And by that I mean as "Me" with no reference to gender.
Quote from: Emmaline on May 11, 2014, 10:54:20 PM
Huge day!
First ever cronut!
That's the real news here. :)
If there's one thing in this world that can beat the feeling of putting that first pill in your mouth, it would be the first cronut. Now you'll never eat a doughnut ever again without thinking, "This is disgusting compared to a cronut."
Cronuts spoiled doughnuts for me. Which is no bad thing. Less doughnut consumption.
Congrats on the first dose of HRT by the way.
Congrats, Emmaline, and welcome to girlitude!
My first: Exited pharmacy, walked out to the car with the bag of new me. Popped a prometrium out of the blister pack and took it with some water. Stuck an estrace under my tongue. Sprayed some suprefact up my nose and just sat there for a while, smiling serenely. I returned to work, trying hard not to burst out laughing.
It was one year short of a day from my 'uh oh... I am trans' to pill number 1.
It sounds like a shared right of passage.
"Neck it as fast as you get it!"
So day 2 and I am feeling so much more focused and engaged, like I have more bandwidth. If, as seems to be what folk are saying, about three days in comes the serenity... well thats going to be pretty sweet.
Talk about being impatient ... I remember the first day / week and the sort of unrealistic expectations I had. Intellectually I knew nothing would happen in the first hours and days, but I kept checking my mood and appearance. Couldn't come soon enough.
I know right? I swore I wouldn't look because I know nothing would be happening- but I caught myself looking today.
Humans.
My endo told me my script would be ready at the RX in about 5 mins, so I got them right away. I couldn't believe how u felt just walking out with them.
But...
I took them home and sat them on the shelf for 2 months. That was how long it took for me to get the ok from my SO. I cleared every other gatekeeper but she was the last. In the end, she told me to start on a Friday in August.
Starting hrt was a huge dream of mine, something that always felt unrealistic. But so did being in a relationship like this. My first hormones were very unceremonious and not a moment of celebration. It meant destroying the life I had created and hurting the person I loved the most.
So did the Boob fairy visit you overnight?
Thanks for sharing Tiff. Sometimes you have to rebuild from the ground up- and you deserve a real life.
My last gatekeeper was my S.O. fortunately we set deadlines and kept to it. It did mean months of moping around on pause.
No booby fairy (titterbelle? Tinkerboob?). Bitch be late. I specifically ordered full 'b's with lazers.
In my case I saw my endocrinologist at 5-ish PM on January 10. After the appointment I went straight to Target, got my precious low-dose pills, and brought them home. I made a little ritual for myself, sitting at my battered desk with the red plastic bottle in front of me, staring at it - I thought to myself that this was it - the first step into a crazy unknown, and everything that goes with it. Then without further ado I popped the first of what is now several thousand pills on my journey of a lifetime.
Uh, Yea, "titterbelle," "titterboob," "boobygenie," where are these, well, these colorful terms coming from, lol!!! Anyway girl, let us know when they (your boobies) let you know. Mine were sore during my second week.
Best wishes. :icon_bunch:
Ally :icon_flower:
Quote from: TiffanyT on May 13, 2014, 02:17:08 AMMy first hormones were very unceremonious and not a moment of celebration. It meant destroying the life I had created and hurting the person I loved the most.
That was one of the saddest things I've read for a long time. Made me think about whether my own decision was the right one, and of the trail of destruction left behind by so many of us through no fault of our own. I hope things turn out well for you in the end, TiffanyT. No, I'm sure they will.