nothings happened yet wtf! where’s my instantaneous magical girl transformation?
seriously tho, i expected some mental change based on how ppl describe the euphoria of being on E, but ig that takes time just like the physical changes.
i can wait tho, i was so indescribably happy last night after injecting. i was tearing up and cuddling with my gf and had amazing sleep. it feels like a new chapter of my life that im more optimistic and joyful for than ive ever been! been waiting almost two years for this moment 🥹
thank you hexbear! i dont know how much longer it would have taken for me to discover my transness if i wasn’t a part of the site with the best trans community on the internet!
and im moving to a medium sized city in a month so ill be in a good place to transition compared to the rural area where i live
i am DIY and made four vials a couple weeks ago. then yesterday i sterilized them at 130C for 30 minutes, pretty easy in oil if you have a digital probe thermometer (i think ppl call them candy thermometers).
my regimen is 11 mg estradiol enanthate stabbed into my butt every 14 days. im planning on getting a blood test in 3 months and adjusting. p sure ill have to up the dose bc im 6’ and 200 lbs. prob gonna try to add progesterone in 6 months to a year even tho the studies on that haven’t been too promising in it helping transfems. prog can actually be pretty cheap if you DIY and mix a powder with coconut/cocoa oil and take it rectally.
it would be easier, but those four vials will last years so ill deal with the extra effort to avoid buying a hot plate
Oh okay, I didn't know it'd last that long both in dosage or shelf life, that's cool
yeah its really neat if you're into that sort of thing (linky)
surprisingly easy to do yourself. If the linked post is to be believed 120+C is overkill, and just doing boiling water is much easier and self-limiting in temperature (I believe her but
)
And the shelf life is aided by adding a bit of preservative like benzyl alcohol
Either way imo absolutely do not sterilize an injection drug by just boiling water, and that includes like all the tools used to inject obviously
Im drunk r/n and haven't been in school for a decade but if i wanted to sterilize a needle i'd dip it in isopropyl alcohol and light it on fire. That was how we sterilized glass stirrers in my microbiology classes at least so i think it'd work okay for steel needles (uhhh idk what needles are made of maybe check that)
I mean pretty much everyone I've seen just uses one-time-use pre-sterilized needles to inject. Insulin needles are easy to get. I'm assuming that part is safe, if not we owe diabetics a huge apology.
Fire would not be a great idea, I think it would be likely to leave residue on the needle depending on the flame source, potentially mess up the heat treatment of the metal, etc. And thankfully not a concern with pre-sterilized needles.
I think also we might have used straight ethanol but that felt wrong because there are a lot of weird tax/legal implications/students could have drank it/etc etc, but I think isopropyl might leave residue, idk
my b I don't really inject things because I don't like needles and did not think to realize that they would come pre-sterilized and not also be part of a DIY thing. That's p. dumb of me u_u
Boiling water limits it to 100c and it's possible for spore forming bacteria and other things to survive, which can be mitigated (idk about estrogen, I mean to like sterilize water, i imagine multiple boilings might affect the quality of the drug) by boiling multiple times and allowing it to cool in between (so those spores germinate, then die before replicating)
To really sterilize things you need high temps which require pressure i.e. an autoclave professionally or a pressure cooker for the home sterility enthusiast or high temperature mediums like oil would work i guess but i feel like there's probably reasons autoclaves and pressure cookers get used for stuff like lab sterilization procedures or growing magic mushrooms at home and tbh idk maybe i'm ignorant but 120C definitely sounds really low to sterilize things but i guess there's also levels of sterility and cleanliness needed so maybe it's fine with this estrogen production method. Idk dawgggg
the thing is there's not much point in autoclaving or otherwise sterilizing everything before you put the estrogen in because the powder itself is not going to be perfectly sterile (hence doing it after, cooking the entire finished vial at once) 120+C is a bit safer, but with the addition of benzyl alcohol I'm not extremely worried. I did consider getting a lab steam sterilizer (purpose built pressure cooker) but decided against it for at least the first batch. You can't go too much past 130C iirc because it starts to affect the estrogen. I appreciate the concern and it's a good PSA I suppose, but as much as possible any risks I've taken were done soberly and with awareness.
But yeah if anyone else is going to do this I guess I'd advise doing the oil or pressurized steam method not just boiling water. That wasn't really the point of my comment and I should have left it off. See my other comment for notes on needles.
with my cishet ignorance and your trans aware knowledge we've spread info to the universe, good job us m i rite
The other thing I remembered was that the heat may make the benzyl alcohol more effective against spores:
But yeah, higher temp better really (and if you can't do that, then boil longer, 1hr or 2 separate intervals of 30m), I don't mean to justify my laziness too much. This is also my first go at injecting things, but between friends who've gotten HRT from their doctors and reading on the internet I think I'm doing okay
oh cool yeah that works then. I don't know anything about benzyl alcohol but if it's killin' them spores at a lower temp and also injection safe then that's p. cool
Yeah higher temp always kills things better but the important thing is if limited to boiling temps to use multiple boiling intervals. I think we re-boiled at shorter intervals in my micro class but 30 minutes or more sounds better imo, let them spores think they're safe then GETTEM
lol
well keep up the good work and keep doin' okay