With respect
@Lori Dee you've only confirmed what I said. It might be best practice, as I said, fine. But to describe is as "dangerous" (@Devlyn) not to do so smacks of the kind of gatekeeping and bullying that drags back our community. Using language like that is unhelpful.
There's always a balance between safety and, forward momentum. I generally err on the side of safety, hence why I don't advocate DIY treating and argue that blood tests are important along the way to monitor levels. Best practice in the UK means you blood test 6-weeks after starting hormone therapy, and then again at 3 months. Once levels settle testing can be every 6-months or, as now in my case, every 12 months.
I repeat what I said: in a normal healthy adult there is no absolute requirement to test bloods prior to commencing HRT. It's not done for cis females and there's no absolute need to do it for us either. And, with the greatest of respect Lori Dee your suggestion that it's needed because they might suddenly discover the patient to be intersex is a little bit absurd. We should not base decisions for the majority on extremely rare instances that might be present in a tiny minority who somehow had no idea all their life that they were intersex. That's like putting motor oil in the engine of your 4-cylinder Nissan Micra only to discover that it's a V8 Ford Mustang. As is the comment that if you only start testing after you start, and then find levels to be too high you won't know the cause. That's not particularly medically sound.
@Stottie Girl you said that "liver function, kidney function and Potassium levels etc these DO need to be known before starting the meds". No they don't. In a normal healthy adult there's no absolute reason to start running those tests prior to starting. There are loads of medications we can be prescribed as adults that
may affect liver and kidney function. We're surely not about to suggest that unless full blood tests are taken prior to these they are acting "dangerously"? Or is that the way this world is now headed? Control.
But you highlighted what I meant: there are 2 red flags why in your case testing would be advisable: 1. your heart condition (I hope you can get this checked) 2. you are DIY-ing,
There's far too much control and coercion out there, and our community suffers from this more than most. And far too many people sticking their oar in: witness for example the way non-experts in the UK stopped UK puberty-blockers in adolescents which had already been approved by medics in the know, and then they even stopped the compromise trials designed to test their safety! Witness too the way my hormones were blocked by another layer of bureaucrats (
https://www.susans.org/index.php?topic=253232). Now
that was dangerous. So understand, that as someone who has been on the receiving end of recent totally unnecessary gatekeeping and roadblocking, I am particularly twitchy on this topic. Stick another layer of testing in front of a healthy adult patient and you're roadblocking. We really don't need another bunch of bullies standing in our path.
Test levels as you go along, of course. The most important test for a normal healthy adult is not one before you start. It's the one at 6 weeks. Test them before you even start, thus putting another roadblock in the way at the hands of so-called professionals? Nope. It's unnecessary in a normal healthy adult and just exacerbates delays in treatment, significantly contributing to dysphoria. The baseline can be taken 6-weeks after starting which is the approach I was given by the NHS.
Presumably few of you on here are suggesting that when my official NHS Gender Identity Clinic first prescribed me hormones without prior blood tests they were acting "dangerously" ... ?
xx
