TransGuys

Meet Mauricio

Mauricio Ochieng, 30, Kisumu state, Kenya

Mauricio travels seven hours on a bus to Nairobi to collect his testosterone injections. It’s a journey he’s been making for over a year. It’s worth it.

“With the injections my body has started changing, I look less ‘feminine’, my voice is deeper and I’m growing a beard,” he says. “I was finally on the way to becoming myself. I am a man. I was never a woman.”

Growing up in rural Kenya, about 350km from the capital Nairobi, Mauricio knew he was different. He has more than 150 cousins and couldn’t relate to any of them.

“I was the black sheep of the family.”

He knew that he was not a girl, despite his body. His parents believed he was a lesbian. That was bad enough, they said, but it was something they understood. When he told them that he was a man in a woman’s body, they made him leave the family home.

Mauricio was 16 and homeless. He was sexually assaulted multiple times. Just over a year later, he fell pregnant from one of the rapes. People called him a “chkora”, a slur for a street beggar.

He went to his mother’s house and said: “Please don’t make me give birth in the street like a dog.”

She let him come home.

Mauricio’s daughter was born in 2007. He worked at the local market, buying and selling shoes.

In 2018 he decided to begin his transition. Testosterone injections cost around 1,200 shilling per dose (about £9) - which is a day’s work.

The 14-hour round trip each month to collect his medication felt like a huge achievement. Mauricio was saving up for Top Surgery: to have his breasts removed.

Then coronavirus reached Kenya, and soon lockdown restrictions followed.

Mauricio does not have his next supply of testosterone.

“I’m having sleepless nights, depression,” he says. “What will happen if I cannot have access to my medication? What will all this pain have been for?

"I am a trans man in a transphobic country. If I don’t get my medication what will happen to my body - it is already changing. Will I look abnormal? Who is going to fight for us to be heard in this chaos?”

(Source: bbc.com)

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10 Ways To Avoid Getting Caught Up In a Testosterone Shortage

There’s zero indication that testosterone shortages are going away, so it’s important to arm yourself with information so that you know what to do when a shortage strikes. 

1. The best way to avoid a testosterone shortage is to not let yourself run out of T to begin with. It’s a good idea to always keep a backup vial around, but this is becoming harder to do in many areas of the U.S. where 10ml and 5ml vials are no longer dispensed and only 1ml vials are available. (Seemingly all of the sudden, pharmacies are enforcing the 28-day rule that calls for multi-dose vials to be discarded 28 days after first use.) If you can, leave a spare vial in your emergency kit, and order your testosterone prescription refill BEFORE you actually run out of T!

2. Get informed about the shortage. Talk with your pharmacist and look up information about the shortage online. You may be able to find out when the shortage is expected to end. In the U.S., you can use this USA Drug Shortage Search tool. In Canada, check here.

3. Take your prescription to another pharmacy. Pharmacies don’t all run out of testosterone at the same time, so if your pharmacy can’t fill your prescription crack the phone book and start calling all the pharmacies in your area, even pharmacies in nearby cities if you have to. You’ll probably need to see your doctor to move your prescription to a different pharmacy.

4. Switch to another brand or formulation. This can be harder to do than it sounds. First, you’ll have to see your doctor for a new prescription. Don’t delay as it’s unlikely that you’ll be the first in line for the alternative brand or formulation and what often happens during a shortage is that the alternative product also becomes unavailable due to increased demand.

In Canada, there are just two brands of injectable testosterone available. They have different concentrations of testosterone requiring a different dosage, as well as different suspension oils which some people are allergic to. If you obtain an alternative brand or formulation, be sure to read the label carefully and compare it to what you normally take.

Switching between different delivery methods, ie. intramuscular vs transdermal, can also lead to difficulty in maintaining stable hormone levels and it can take months for your body to adjust to the switch.

“Switching back and forth between different products is not ideal, and many doctors do not have experience in prescribing the different forms of testosterone,” said Dr Anastacia Tomson during the recent South African shortage.

Of course, be prepared to pay more as all the alternatives to T. cypionate and T. enanthate will be more expensive.

“I noticed a difference when I switched from Reandron to Testex, but this [shortage] is much worse. It’s not just about getting my period back, which is bad enough because it means reliving everything I’ve struggled to get away from, it’s about general changes in my body. I feel more sluggish and tired. And I’ve put on weight.” —Yerai, transgender man in Spain

5. Check with your local trans health clinic. If you have access to a trans health clinic, you may find that they keep some testosterone on hand and can give you shots during a shortage (provided you have an existing prescription.)

6. Get injectable T compounded. Only certain compounding pharmacies can make injectable testosterone so you’ll need to search around. Depending on where you live in the U.S., New Era Pharmacy in Portland, OR may be able to ship to you. Some downsides are that the accuracy of testosterone concentrations in compounded T has been questioned and compounded injectable testosterone can cost twice as much as what you’re used to spending on testosterone.

7. Get T from a friend. This is illegal and would likely be frowned upon by your prescribing doctor, but when times are tough sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

8. Ration your supply of testosterone. If you can reduce your dosage or frequency of injections, you might be able to ride out the shortage, though you probably won’t feel 100%.

9. Patience. If a testosterone shortage isn’t expected to last very long, you might be able to just wait it out, although symptoms of low T will start to creep up as soon as two weeks after a shot.

10. Underground labs. This is illegal and not recommended. Buying testosterone from a rogue internet pharmacy is a dangerous way to obtain medicine, but when you’re left without options the risks can look a little less menacing. If you’re forced to resort to this, you absolutely must purchase a testosterone testing kit.

Hopefully, you’ll never feel the effects of a testosterone shortage, but if you do, at least you’ve got a game plan now.

Source: Testosterone Shortages: Whatcha Gonna Do When They Come For YOU?

(Source: transguys.com)

29 notes

10 Tips to Reduce Intramuscular Testosterone Injection Pain

1. Find injection sites that work for you (“sweet spots”) and rotate them. The deltoid (arm), vastus lateralis (thigh), and ventrogluteal (hip/butt) muscles are acceptable sites for IM injections. The common dorsogluteal injection site is no longer recommended. (Doing T shots in your butt? Read this.)

2. Choose your gear wisely. Use a needle that is long enough to penetrate deep into the muscle. Use a larger gauge needle for drawing up, then switch to a smaller gauge needle to inject.

3. Shorten your cycle. If you’re injecting every 14 days, you might try moving to a 7 day cycle to see if injecting the smaller volume helps minimize pain.

4. Re-visit your injection technique. Air-lock or Z-track? Are you injecting straight in or does the trajectory of the needle shift during injection? Fast or slow? Small tweaks to your technique might provide big wins in reducing post-injection pain.

5. Warm up and relax. Have a hot shower or bath before your injection to warm up the injection site. While injecting, keep the muscle relaxed (and unflexed.)

6. Warm up your T. too! Hold the vial in a closed fist for a couple of minutes, run it under hot water or place it on a baseboard heater for a minute to warm the T. to room temperature or a little higher. Warm oil in a warm muscle will produce less pain than cold oil in a cold muscle!

7. After sterilizing the injection site with alcohol, let the skin dry. Penetrating the skin with the needle before the alcohol has evaporated can cause a stinging pain sensation.

8. Apply manual pressure to the injection site for 10 seconds before your injection. Be sure to maintain sterility!

9. After your injection, reduce pain and swelling by applying topical Arnica gel or cream, and then ice the injection site.

10. Some people swear by it, so massage the site after injection if you think it helps!

Excerpt from 10 Ways to Make Intramuscular Testosterone Injections Less Painful: A review of scientific studies sets the record straight on minimizing post-injection pain from IM injections.

(Source: transguys.com)

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More Than Ten Years on Testosterone - Is It Safe??

Have you ever worried about the possible long-term effects of being on Testosterone?

Well, you can relax because science has your back.

Italian researchers concluded in 2014 that “Testosterone administration in FtM subjects has a good safety profile” after finding “no significant serious adverse effects and no clinically relevant changes” in 45 FTM patients treated for at least 10 years with T.

Also notable: “Liver and kidney function tests did not show any significant changes.”

The aim of the study was to assess the effects and safety of Testosterone administration on body weight, lipid profile, hematological and bone parameters in trans men.

Source: Safety of More Than Ten Years Testosterone Administration in FTM Subjects. Cristina Meriggiola, MD, PhD, Antonietta Costantino, PhD, Carla Pelusi, MD, Martina Lambertini, MD, Alberto Bazzocchi, MD. Book of Abstracts, WPATH 2014 Biennial International Symposium.

Related Studies:

Largest Study to Date: Transgender Hormone Treatment Safe (2014)

Long-term cross-sex hormone treatment is safe in transsexual subjects.
Cristina Meriggiola M, Berra M. Asian Journal of Andrology. 2012;14(6):813-814. doi:10.1038/aja.2012.89.

Also see: Myths and Misconceptions about Testosterone - FTM Guide

18,150 notes

Common T Injection Site No Longer Recommended

Doing T shots in your butt? Stuff to know:

Best practice guidelines in Canada call for IM injections to be done in the *Ventrogluteal (VG) muscle* NOT the more common Dorsogluteal site.

One reason is because of the sciatic nerve location:

Buttock intramuscular injection risks injury to the sciatic nerve, which may lead to lower limb palsy, most often presenting as paralytic drop foot. This condition rarely results from direct traumatic lesion of the sciatic nerve, but *usually from the caustic effect of the injected drug.*

Think that couldn’t happen to you? In Nova Scotia, the Supreme Court awarded more than $600,000 to a plaintiff who had damage to the sciatic nerve by injection to DG area. He suffers disabling pain in his buttock and left leg, is unable to work, and his condition is permanent. (cfmhn.ca)

Also: “Thickness of fat in this area… one study found the success rate of IM injections to be 32% (which fell to 8% in female patients)!”

Links:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11270260
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16924999
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/releases/224614.php
http://thenursepath.com/2014/04/23/the-ventrogluteal-im-injection-site/
https://www.eroids.com/forum/general/general-talk/finding-the-ventrogluteal-for-self-im-injection
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(Source: facebook.com)

839 notes

Aveed Long-Acting Testosterone Approved by FDA

Aveed is the U.S. equivalent to the long-acting testosterone formulation known in other parts of the world as Nebido, and it was recently approved by the FDA. Aveed is being touted as having “major advantages” over T. cypionate and T.enanthate, including fewer injections (about every 2 to 3 months), less fluctuation in testosterone levels, and possibly less risk of erythrocytosis.

View Full Article >

(Source: transguys.com)

1,845 notes