I forgot that it's my mega week so no big info dump this time. Instead I bring a question: how do you practice gender self-care? Do you have any activities or rituals that make you feel more comfortable in your gender? Painting my nails and taking care of my hair are the most consistent ones. These shouldn't even be considered gendered activities by society, but I missed out on having long hair and painted nails when I was younger because of my assigned gender, so doing them now feels validating and gives me confidence.
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I got my Estrogen implant this morning!
So Australia is a bit odd when it comes to feminizing HRT. We have all the tablets, gels and patches that are used in menopause treatment for cis women. But we don't have easily available injections. This is because no pharmaceutical has bothered to get Therapeutic Goods approval in Australia because the market of trans women is presumably too small. So many trans femmes do DIY injections if they want them. Or they can be made by a compounding chemist (who crunches tablets and blends them into an oil suspension), but that's expensive with a poor shelf life (taking away two really good things about injections).
But our endocrinologists fucking love implants for trans women. Which is weird because implant are considered a bit niche the rest of the world. It's probably in part because we had a trans woman who was an endocrinologist in the 1980s (which is wild) who advocated them heavily. They've fallen out of vogue for Cis Women in menopause too. But this means I got a GP to put an implant in my butt today.
I have been on progynova sublingually for 15mths. Most doctors won't do an implant until you've been on a year. Ostensibly this is make sure you tolerate the estrogen, I think it's because Cis people are squeamish about less reversible forms of HRT. Because it's not easily reversible. It would need to be fished out under surgery instead of just being stopped. Which is super cool.
I got 200mg put in (2x100mg implants) which I paid about 200 Australian dollars from a compounding pharmacy. It cost 280 AUD for the GP to put it in my butt. They gave me local. Made a 1cm cut. Pushed them in with a device, then put a single dissolvable stitch. On the surface this is a lot of money. But with two implants I'm probably going to have high levels of estrogen for 12-18months straight! The doctor said I shouldn't check my levels for 3-6 months because I'm going to be at pregnancy levels for a little while!
Right now I'm sitting a little sorely, I kind of feel great, but it's probably also placebo.
That's so cool. I wonder how much getting them compounded in the US would cost. A year+ of not having to take hrt sounds so nice, happy for you!
I've heard some bougie clinics do it in the US. I will still take prog but it's really nice to not have the levels fluctuate like I've been noticing.
Hoping for the holy grail of estradiol+prog impants in the future. Would be so nice to just get them changed out once yearly or even less.
Its like a crystal, swear to god
Congratulations on the implants, that sounds so nice!