Yesterday (or the day before), I was actually researching this out of curiosity for my best friend. Turns out as far as transdermal T options go, prices are:
Commercial gels: up to 150 $ a month
Compounded gels (needs to be specifically written on the prescription and prepared at a special compounding pharmacy): 90 $ a month
Cream imported from Australia: 50 $ a month
QuoteCreams: Can be more cost effective at $50/mth as they are imported direct to you from Australia and you don't need a prescription. But you need to see a doctor at the start to ensure correct dosage and to undertake regular checks - same with any treatment you may use.
There's also the alternative option of getting implants, but those are apparently very, very expensive, even though they're probably the best solution medically speaking.
All of this is as read in a Yahoo! Answer, so it's not encyclopedia stuff, but it looks pretty reliable.
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090221143349AAJV9PmAnd I was taking Estrogel (for estrogen, duh), but I figure the problem might be the same with Androgel. If you do blood tests soon-ish after applying your gels, your results will go crazy. Basically, the principle of the gel is to store the hormone in your arms' tissue so that they are gradually flushed through the blood stream and thus made available to the body. It's just logical that plunging a needle precisely there wouldn't give you similar results to what is the average level in the body.
Two different blood tests gave levels of 1000 and 400 pmol/L (lol, same dose, doubled level, super logical) of estradiol because of proximity to the time when I took the gel, but I know for a fact I had almost nothing going through my system, because I was taking the same dose as post-menopausal women, which is the strict minimum to deal with menopause symptoms.
FYI, if I had such high blood values, sure as heck after the long time I've been on HRT, I wouldn't have so little results, and I wouldn't have started feeling the slight effect again when I went back to the pills I took before Estrogel, which gave me a (probably) reliable, steady dose of around 200. That's a level that would barely be alarming for a man.
My endo dismisses this explanation and all common sense, but I can certify something went wrong with these blood tests. Now, this is reported information from another patient from my province who sees another endo in another city, so don't take it for a fact, but when I asked about this on another forum, I was told that the endo in Montréal always tells patients who take Estrogel to go get their blood tests 24 hours after their last dose, and to make sure their arms are well washed before blood is taken.
Even though Estrogel is a medication whose purpose is to deliver relatively steady levels of estradiol over 24 hours, by storing the estradiol in the skin/fat/whatever, my endo said that my result of 150-180-something (forgot precisely) by following these instructions comes from estradiol's half-life being 12(?) hours. Even though the half-life obviously shouldn't begin to be counted until the product is actually released; if not, extended release products would be pointless.
So yeah, I figure my endo is getting old and never got to thinking about gels because he doesn't tend to prescribe them to trans patients. Only explanation to his contradictions. Hey, he said in the same appointment that I was indeed taking the standard menopausal woman dose and that the goal for these was usually around 200 pmol/L of estradiol, and also that it was absolutely possible and normal that I would get 2-5 times that with the same dose, even though I'm quite average in size.
