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Doctors, do they know what they're doing?

Started by V M, August 03, 2011, 11:42:06 PM

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JungianZoe

Quote from: Ann Onymous on August 04, 2011, 04:16:53 PM
When I started HRT, we went through a metric phucton (technical term there ;) ) of different meds trying to find something that my hyperactive metabolism would work with...

Yet another thing I have going against me in my doctor's only method of prescribing hormones: my metabolism is insane.  I recently gained 25 pounds, but I had to eat 4000 to 5000 calories a day in order to do so (I gained the weight because I was 25 pounds underweight for my height).  If a pound is 3000 calories and a normal person eats like that for 4 months the way that I did, that's a gain of 80 to 120 pounds (factoring between 2000 to 3000 excess calories a day).  I only gained 25.
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Sunnynight

Quote from: Zoƫ Natasha on August 04, 2011, 04:14:30 PM
Oh, I do... it's medically proven.  Three doctors have said I had the strongest liver they'd ever seen.  My gastro back in the day said my liver was "a rock god."  It destroys everything that goes into my body.  Back when I needed pills to control stomach acid, we went through six different medications in three months, increasing the dosage until they stopped working and then going to the next-strongest pill.  At the end, I was on the highest dose of the strongest medication available and it stopped working in four days.

Turns out that any medication that's regularly taken doesn't work on me because my liver gets really good at destroying it and my body's natural processes (even bad ones like the one that could have turned to stomach cancer) take over.  What finally worked was taking the medication irregularly so that it shocked my system every time.

All thanks to my liver...

My HRT doc knows this about me and still refuses to do anything but oral estrogen, saying that if it doesn't work, then I'm one of the unlucky ones who can't expect any results from HRT.
That's terrible. Thank God you're one of the transwomen smart enough to know better.
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JungianZoe

Quote from: Sunnynight on August 04, 2011, 04:23:05 PM
That's terrible. Thank God you're one of the transwomen smart enough to know better.

I do know one transwoman who did injectable, and when I see her next week, I'm going to ask her who the doc was that prescribed them.  Hopefully the doc was local and I can get in to see them.  Because I think that orals (even though I take it sublingually) aren't going to have the same effect on me that injectables might.  And I know HRT WILL work, because I got some changes and breast growth.  The problem is that it all stopped, just like my body stops reacting to anything I put into it for any length of time.  It's very common with my body.

So I see my current doc on the 17th and we'll see what she says.  I'm in a state of total panic right now. :(  What if I really never will develop or get hormones that work?  Ever since my doctor told me that, I've shed a great many tears of desperation.
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JungianZoe

One more avenue: I just got an appointment with my therapist tomorrow morning, and I'm going to ask if she knows any docs who prescribe what I need.  I am NOT going to take no for an answer here!  There have to be more options open to me than no HRT or HRT that makes me suicidal and seemingly doesn't work anyway.
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Princess of Hearts

I have been saying this all along that while I don't quite think that doctors are completely making it up as they go along.   I do think that they do a great deal of experimenting with HRT.    I would rather a doctor under prescribed than dished out a high dose with his fingers crossed.   
   I wonder what I would have been like if I didn't have my very negative experiences of medical science?   Perhaps seeing one person die because of medical mismanagement and others suffer unnecessarily with too invasive operations has given me what I believe is a very healthy dose of scepticism regarding medicine.    I am sure that without this history I would be today obsessing over surgeries and hrt and foolishly trusting my mind and body to medical experimenters.

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Princess of Hearts

Doctors private and NHS prescribed so many pills for my father that it was a wonder that he didn't rattle.   None of these pills cured his ailments but they did give him violent day long migraines and terrible nausea.  One lot of pills did do some good but they made him so anxious that he had to come off them.
Do you know that doctors and medical science have no idea what pill combinations do to the brain and body?   They are never tested because it is too expensive and too time consuming.  So no one can say that pill A, pill B and pill C combined won't harm the patient.   They may well be fine individually but taken together....Type 'Iotragenic' into Google and see what comes up.  Tens of thousands of people die and are permanently incapacitated due to dangerous pill combinations, each and every year.

To get back to my father, I believe that the pills greatly antagonised and weakened his body while doing little more than suppressing his symptoms 'papering over the cracks', 'sweeping the dirt under the carpet'.   The medicos decided that an operation was in order...the operation killed him, the stress of the operation upon a pill weakened body, combined with the anaesthetic was too much for his heart and he died a few days after.

This explains why I simply cannot be a Pollyanna cheerleader for HRT or a SRS, orchie, FFS, tracheal shave True Believer.

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caitlin_adams

Hi Zoe

Just a quick question, is your doctor a general practioner or an endocrinologist? Maybe with your particularly difficult metabolism a specialist is in order.

I completely agree with your assessment that your current doctor hasn't tried all the options.

Good luck in your search. Just remember that you're only one appointment away from being back on track. The next doctor you see may be the one that gets it right, it's not unlikely.

Keep up the hope!
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JungianZoe

Quote from: caitlin_adams on August 04, 2011, 07:19:52 PM
Hi Zoe

Just a quick question, is your doctor a general practioner or an endocrinologist? Maybe with your particularly difficult metabolism a specialist is in order.

I completely agree with your assessment that your current doctor hasn't tried all the options.

Good luck in your search. Just remember that you're only one appointment away from being back on track. The next doctor you see may be the one that gets it right, it's not unlikely.

Keep up the hope!

She's a general practitioner, but she's the most-recommended doc in my area for HRT.  90% of the trans people I know have her (or had her) as their doc.  All the therapists know her and recommend her above all.  My therapist did.  The therapist who runs the gender identity center I volunteer with did as well.  Whenever you say you're on HRT, everyone asks right away if she's your doc.  Her clinic is booked months in advance.

And yet, I'm not satisfied with the answers I'm getting... and I'm stunned that someone with so much depth and experience only uses two treatment options, and refuses to do progesterone or injectable estrogen.
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Dana_H

Zoe,

I know I'll be watching for updates on this quest.  I haven't started HRT yet, but that's the general geographic area where I'll be looking when the time comes. It'd be nice to know as much as possible about the options.

I really hope you find a workable solution soon.
Call me Dana. Call me Cait. Call me Kat. Just don't call me late for dinner.
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JungianZoe

Real quick before bed, I found out that my doctor does do injectable estrogen, but doesn't prescribe it until she get the dosage worked out with orals.  And given recent events, I'm not sure we're there yet.  To top it off, she only does three-month checkups so finding the right balance is incredibly slow (it's taken a year and we still don't have it figured out).  Just one more thing to bring up when I see her on the 17th.
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