/lgbt/ - LGBT

>>6906
hell yeah! happy for you
>give tips to not squirm when poking myself
also give tips to poke yourself
i do intramuscular, following the pdf guide from fenway health harm reduction. if your seeing a doctor i imagine they'll give you some instructions.

i find it helpful to play music during shot time. same song everytime, francesca, because i find the part where it drops into the chorus really compelling. also queue up a good relaxing song or two before your shot song to give you enough time to sanitize and get in the zone.

as for the poke, there's a really good youtube video of a nice nurse guy giving himself an IM shot in the thigh. i can't find it on mobile right now. the nurse guy does this thing where he coughs as he sticks the needle quickly. doing this was a game changer for me. something about the cough disconnects your brain for a second and makes it pain free. i highly recommend it i will find the video when im home.

make sure your needles are sized appropriately. use a separate needle for drawing and injecting, etc etc. injection guides will tell you all the details.

>i'm guessing i'll order estradiol from Astrovials and Spiro from somewhere else?
my first vials were estradiol enanthate from lena and i bought my spiro from united pharmacies. needles and such you can buy online (i use a vet supply but friends just use amazon). diyhrt(dot)market is good for finding where to buy shit.

>>6906
the other anon basically stole all my tips. As long as you're in the right location your nerves are near the surface of your skin so the part that feels like a poke, if it's gonna hurt at all, is the initial bit. So best practices for me is too quickly pierce the skin and then you can push into the muscle without much discomfort at all. IM injections are way easier and more comfortable than like a blood test imo

>>6911
>>6910

the edgy part of me wishes i could do this thing they do in videogames tho i know it probably hurts like shit with a normal syringe and probably with an injector too

either way i'd squirm.

do i need to use 2 needles? one for drawing the liquid and one to inject myself?

that sounds expensive

>>6912
each time you use a needle it dulls it a bit. So no, you do not NEED to change the needle between drawing and injecting it is just what's usually standard to avoid the chance of more painful injections. If you are in desperate financial issues it's totally doable, but needles are very inexpensive online at least where I am.

>>6912
the nice nurse dude video i was talking about

>>6906
congrats
>>6912
no not rly, i use the same one for both and i do subq. people who say to use two usually are on prescription which is a lower concentration so more fluid, and the oil used is thicker so you have to sit there for minutes waiting for it to draw through tiny little needle. astro uses mct oil which is pretty thin. subq is just easier and less painful

theres really no benefit of IM over subq
https://pghrt.diy/#S5.SS7

i use 29g insulin syringes, they have no deadspace so no lost product. i recommend the same or maybe even 31g but not lower than 27g, 1/2 inch needle, and go for 1/2 or 1/3 cc over full 1 mL ones if you can get them, because it will make dosing in the 4-6 mg range easier with 40mg/mL vials. at that concentration 4mg is 0.1 mL 5mg is 0.125 mL and 6mg is 0.15 mL so you can see why ~1/10th of a already small syringe can get inaccurate

for me
sanitize vial and injection site with alcohol. pull in same amount of air as dose. orient the bevel of the needle facing up. go into the stopper at 45 degrees bevel first then straiten out flip the vial upside down. inject the air to neutralize pressure. draw slowly so you dont get bubbles but you will anyway so over draw then tap the side and push the bubbles back. when you get the dose right take it out pinch the skin lightly over vastus lateralis. too tight on pinch makes it more difficult. they say you wanna hold syringe like a dart. i stab slow which probly hurts more but it doesnt really hurt with such tiny needles i usually dont even feel it you can probly actually jab just be controlled. you want 90 to 45 degrees depending on how much subq fat you actually have. i do 90 and push it all the way in. after a bit of pushing the needle kinda pops through to the other side. you wanna inject kinda slow so you dont cause bruising from like turbulence or whatever. i usually tense and end up twisting at an angle. dont do that lol try to relax. make sure you squeeze it all out and wait a second for pressure to equalize then just slide it out and let go of the pinch. even if you dont wait enough and it leaks it will be negligible amount. if it bleeds a bit its not a big deal you just nicked one of the thousands of blood vessels. you can sanitize again and bandaid but you dont have to. it will leave a little depot bump that lasts a few days or so as your body metabolizes slowly. doesnt hurt or anything. and thats it basically. oh and rotate sites. you can do stomach or back of arm too but i just do right leg left leg top of thigh bottom of thigh 4 weeks of rotate should be enough

>>6906
>as soon as i get my doses from the endo maybe in a week
wat
https://startwith4mgestradiolenanthateweeklyandtestatonetothreemonths.com/
>>6906
>i'm guessing i'll order estradiol from Astrovials and Spiro from somewhere else?
you dont need both https://pghrt.diy/#S2.SS3

also 4chan /lgbt/catalog#s=hrtgen

flood detected;fuckyoujannie

>>6915

is it me or is he squirming when about to inject himself?

happy for you bestie /gen

Congratulations! I just use these numbing stickers (the brand Amla or something) whenever i get a blood test because blood tests are living hell. But unfortunately, the plasters are only available in Poland.

>>6921

i would usually just look away and that does it but i guess that's not an option when doing it yourself

>>6919
He looks like he might have some sort of tremor issue idk I'm not a nurse or anything. As long as the muscle in your leg isn't violently spasming it's not a big deal. If you are gonna do it in the thigh I would make sure to sit on the bed or couch so your thigh gets squished up more than a chair like he has

Alternate between your bum cheeks and your upper arms. For your bum draw a diagonal line down from the top of your bum crack to the outer part of your thigh and stab the needle in outside the line. For the upper arms, find the top muscle cluster. Basically when you look at your arm inject it into the biggest outer part of the muscle below your shoulder. It hurts a bit more than with the bum sometimes but is much easier to do imo.

>>6924

yeah i have a hard time imagining how to reach my bum nowadays, i'm not as flexible as i was, i could still do it but i'd prob strain a mucle.

Is the HRT more effective if you inject it directly into your boobs?

>>6927

there wasn't some estrogen cream for the boobs?

does it work?

>>6923
>so your thigh gets squished up
That's actually a misconception. Squishing is good for finding fat deposits, but it makes no difference whether you inject while gathering them or not. Needles isn't really a big deal to me, since i've previously had to inject anticoagulant for weeks. I do sometimes pull out again, to avoid directly injecting above a nerve.

>>6927
bad idea in general to stick needles in your chest i think.
>>6928
i started out with transdermal estradiol (estrogel) before i switched to pills then injections. i applied it to my ballz, though there's hardly any research for taking that route:
https://transfemscience.org/articles/genital-e2-application/
injections are still better because your levels fluctuate so damn much with gel or pills.

>>6931

but i meant specifically for boobs?
then you switched to progesterone? i got lost

As of today, i've officially started HRT!

>>7155
LETS FUCKIN GO MI REINAAAAAAAA

>>6906
>>7155
you are pretty retarded if youre actually taking spiro and spamming about trans stuff despite not having transitioned at all
spiro just fucks breast growth and makes you pee yourself, i didnt take it and mine grew fine, it is the worst AA, do not take spiro
seriously
DO NOT TAKE SPIRO

>>7155
Wow you get to be happy while I’ll never be because of my phobia of needles. You have it so fucking easy yet you want us to celebrate you? You already get the privledge of being able to start hrt

>>7162
stop being a bitterhon. the fate of our own is intertwined with that of our species in its entirety, and those morsels of happiness that one finds in this hell are too precious to toss away or to compel someone to.

OP will soon learn that life is an incorrigible pit of vice and suffering, and that man is wolf to man, but it's too early for that right now.

>>7159

then what do i do? that's what my prescription says D:

also i transitioned literally every other way as when i got kicked out of home i had to live with my extremely everythingphobic grandpa and i just now he's not around and i have a sorta stable source of income to buy the prescriptions.
every other way i girlmode everywhere and every day and i'm out to everyone around me.


>>7162

i am also scared of needles, but i'm used to swallowing my fear.
which makes my tummy hurt.

UPDATE!

I got my first Estradiol shot today!

but also got sad / we made another tgirl sad on Xitter
long story short; the word "hondose" leaked into latam trans circles, she cried, i got worried and paranoid, and people telling us spiro is not an anti-androgen so they should've used cyproterone and that anything below 200mg spiro, or idk how much cypro is a hondose.
their doctors also delayed their injections for 3 months.

what is even going on?

also my buttock hurts still, owie.

>>7673
congrats :3 also re: hondosing/antiandrogens you can do estradiol monotherapy if you're on injections and that removes the need to be on an antiandrogen although you might want to at least be on one early on until your T levels have settled into the right range

Should I go on prog? Doesn't seem like there are really any benefits but also it is meant to complete breast growth. Maybe I'll take just a really small amount of it.

>>7673
hondose? Cause it makes you look like a Hon?
Why is there so much toxicity in intra-tgirl discourse

>>7697

DIYers are unreasonably mad at tgirls who go to doctors apparently.
feelsbad

>>7712

like i get it from a class perspective why you'd be jealous of someone who can visit a doctor, but for a lot of us it wasn't really an option to DIY

in my case my father forbid me from it and my bf who's been helping me also wanted me to see a doctor first.

>>7783
DIY is just better though, and it is always an option. You don't have to listen to your father. I hope you at least are firm with the doctors next time you talk so they can give you high dosage patches or gell and another aa rather than spiro which will fuck up breast development and is literally the worst thing you could be taking.

happy4u (real)

>>7712
>unreasonably mad at tgirls
nah they mad at your doctor for lying and spreading disinfo, if mad at you its for repeating the disinfo
>>7783
>you'd be jealous of someone who can visit a doctor
no i really agree DIY is better in almost every way. ester choice, carrier oil, concentration, price, trust, safety, speed, dose, etc are all better. if you have the option idk why you would ever choose to not do een 40mg/ml. the only benefit of a doctor is if you get the 1/100 good ones and have insurance you can blood test every week for free and dial in your dose really accurate but thats ultra fucking rare and most of them will only test you like twice a year and make you wait six months to go from one underdose to a slightly less underdose.

I hate himbos and bimbos so fucking much

>>7792
epic bait

>>7712
stupid
>>7783
idiot
>>7673
spirohon
>>7788
trvth nvke

but it is your life to fuck up, so whatever i guess

>>7799
>>7792
>>7788
>>7785

where is all this coming from?
you're still attacking the wrong person if you legitimately believe what you say, how about share some fucking resources instead of just personally attacking people?
no wonder the Xitter girl ended up crying.

>>7804
Posters are indeed mean as fuck but Sabi I really appreciate you as a poster and basically the spiro + oral E combo is shit and ass.
You have more side effects (including increased risk of clots, beyond what is normal for a cis girl) and less results (which also come much slower)

Doing DIY is cheaper on the long run and the effects are much faster and better, but its trickier (you have to pay with crypto) and scarier (syringes…yeah). Still it's worth it in the end. Doing DIY you get in a year the results that spiro + oral E would give you in 10, and without weirdass bullshit side effects.

There's also that endocrinologists are not really trained for trans people nor they give a single fuck, their knowledge is like 10 years behind when it comes to trans stuff and lots of them are religious conservatards anyway that will likely try to sabotage you on purpose. You can do better and deserve better.

>>7805

i'm not on Oral E thou i'm getting Algestone Estradiol injections biweekly

this endo was recommended by the local trans association and… well most trans people in the association ig.

i am definitely willing to ask him about cypro although seeing how the local pharmacy page i searched it on immediately nuked itself when i clicked on it i might have to check it's availability and make a plan to get it.

>>7806
>biweekly
every other week or twice a week?
>Algestone
wikipedia says that's a progestin with estrogenic effects. either you're not getting estradiol at all, or you might be getting injections of some combined contraceptive.
>cypro
seconding this being better than spiro, but be aware long-term exposure to it and other progestins is associated with a slightly higher brain tumor risk than bioidentical progesterone

>>7804
there are at least two of us im just hiding from mean jannies
>>7807
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estradiol_enantate/algestone_acetophenide
the first part is EEN so thats good.
14 days isnt the greatest but not terrible

idk why you would need an AA if you have access to E injections? just do mono e it suppresses t on its own at high enough levels. AA have unnecessary and weird side effects. its basically just a hold over because doctors are paranoid about their license and practice insurance and getting sued so they take their fucking time dialing you in and never want to aim high and drop it later so they lean on the AA to stop masculinization(supress t) instead of focusing on starting feminization at all. theyre worried about freak blood clots but e alone has no higher risk than cis women. synthetic progestins like DHPA(algestone) also have more side effects than just e

you didnt tell us the brand or dose or concentration but looking around a lot are 75/5 or 150/10 DHPA/EEN per mL and some are sold by the mL

so are you doing Estradiol enantate doing 10mL every 14 days(+DHPA)? its probably fine because DHPA will additionally suppress and you have access to testing so they will eventually get you dialed in if you arent already.

they probably do it like that because Algestone acetophenide(DHPA) has a half life of 24 days where Estrodial Enanthate is ~7 days

you can compare dose/frequency here.
https://estranshumanistai.se/

at 10mg/14day you get huge difference from peak to trough like 200 to 400pg/mL. definitely not an underdose just really swingy. compare to 5mg/7 day swings from like 330-370pg/ML. more stable and no risk of going too low. at 10mg, if thats where your at, that alone would get you over wpath levels which are notoriously low at 200 max and a lot of doctors want to keep you under that for no reason, whereas with mono you kinda wanna be above that all the time

if its only 5mg/14 days then its probably a low dose but will still work because of the addition of DHPA will keep you suppressed when you dip low. it just might not feel great psychologically

heres a bunch of graphs and stuff. it mentions DHPA too
https://transfemscience.org/articles/injectable-e2-meta-analysis/

most DIY is thinner carrier oil so you can go faster and use smaller diameter needles, which hurt less, and you dont have to use a different needle for drawing and injecting so can use no dead space insulin syringes so you dont waste any solution. and the concentration is 40mg/mL instead of 10mg/mL so you inject way less fluid for same dose, which also is easier and hurts less, and makes less of a bump at the injection site, less chance of bruising or scarring. i guess if there doing it for you a lot of that doesnt apply. and personally i just trust independent lab testing and community review more than anything big pharma.

but overall you arent in a bad spot. id just consider dropping the combo after a few months or a year when you get settled and are comfy but if you dont get side effects and everything is progressing as it should be theres no real reason to rock the boat if your doc is cool

>>7807

every 15 days to be precise

>>7809

tbf my dad is also scared of blood clots

i'm taking Generic 150 / 10mg something

>>7806
>Algestone
the fuck? why the fuck are you taking some random fucking injection? ive never even fucking heard of it
take something normal what the fuck
you should not be on long term AAs anyway, after a bit just do monotherapy, it's easier and better
seriously dont take some synthetic progestin shit that is straight retarded
you shouldnt even be taking a progesterone at this point i think
go buy some actual estrogen online
you can even buy estradiol ethantate without the weird retarded shit they added to it
itll probably be cheaper and you dont even have to mention it to your doctor because you will be taking basically the same medicine
fucking hate doctors

>>7876

it's not progesterone
think it has something to do with availability and starting doses?

i might be able to switch later if i can convince him i can get it from somewhere else?…

i ran out of money so i'd have to make a new plan to make the switch whilst continuing treatment.

>>7878
>it's not progesterone
yes it is, it's a synthetic progesterone
i dont really know about costs in your country or your money situation, so im not sure if it would be less or more expensive there to diy
but why does your doctor need to know you're taking the same thing without the progestin anyway?
also dont use the ai overview

>>7880

it's like 2-3$ USD every shot x2

and another 2-3$ per 25mg pill box, with 2 boxes comes and uhhh, in total i've spent like 300$ MXN for like half a month supply sorta? or *very close* to a month

close to 16 USD

which is more or less something but i don't have to pay for shipping

wanted to get a quick check on what it is through google first, it's not like i understand or trust any of the other sources either.

so it mostly told me things i already sorta knew.

>>7881
i guess i didnt consider shipping, not counting it diy is definitely still cheaper
i know my monthly costs add up to less than $10 at least, but i didnt really count needles because they're so cheap here, so it's probably a little bit more than that but not by much since it's only like 5/month
still recommend diying

>>7887

for a year's worth shipment it might be worth it, still have to ask because it's my dad's house and my bf been helping me too

however i'd need to know exactly what i'm asking for and not just say "some trans girls on a communist 4chan told me"

syringes are… "cheap" they sold me a pack of 4 for like 2$ USD

but the needle kinda big, and it made my buttock hurt for a couple of days,

getting help from my dad's girlfriend atm but when she can't imma go pay 10 pesos for the shot tho i have to get in line early.
and should probably still study the diagram they gave me in case neither option is available at some point.

>>7888
Afaik youre supposed to use a thicker needle to get the fluid from the vial and then swap it for a thinner needle for injection. I'm not trans though so take it with a grain of salt

>>7897
not using vials atm, it comes in ampules.

>>7899
It should work then, no? You're supposed to use filter needles for extracting from the ampules. Then you swap the needle, push the air out if necessary, and inject it. Try asking a medical professional, cuz you're gonna be doing this injection thing for a long time and it's better if you're not sore

>>7900

well the person injecting me doesn't seem to say nothing and my nurse friend says there is just no way for a glass fragment to be ever small enough to get through the needle caliber