This week’s current issue in mental health: the price of medication. With numerous people sharing stories about how medication was the first step when they were getting help, we wanted to point out how the cost of these treatments is prohibitive especially for people without insurance.
my fave greek history story to tell is that of agnodice. like she noticed that women were dying a lot during childbirth so she went to egypt to study medicine in alexandria and was really fucking good but b/c it was illegal for women to be doctors in athens she had to pretend to be a man. and then the other doctors noticed that she was 10x better than them and accused her of seducing and sleeping with the women patients. like they brought her to court for this. and she just looked at them and these charges and stripped in front of everyone like “yeah. im not fucking your wives” and then they got so mad that a woman was better at their jobs then them that they tried to execute her but all her patients came to court and were like “are you fucking serious? she is the reason you have living children and a wife.” so they were shamed into changing the law and that is how women were given the right to practice medicine in athens
i hate when ppl say shit like BUT ANTIDEPRESSANTS ALTER YOUR BRAIN FUNCTION UNNATURALLY READ UP ON IT NURGGHH like yeah, youre right, they force it to produce serotonin so i can function, similar to how i take thyroxine bc my thyroid doesnt fucking make the right shit, similar to how people with diabetes take insulin, similar to how people with low iron take iron supplements, you thin slice of nutloaf
do you yell at people for eating food bc their body doesnt just naturally photosynthesize energy on its own
1. Progesterone: not for everyone, but for many people it may increase
sex drive and WILL make your boobs bigger. Also effects mood in ways
that many find positive (but some find negative). Most doctors won’t
prescribe this to you unless you ask. Most trans girls I know swear by
it.
2. Injectible estrogen: is
more effective than pill or patch form. Get on it if you can bear
needles bc you will see more effects more quickly.
3. Estradiol
Cypionate: There is currently a shortage of injectible estradiol
valerate. There is no shortage of estradiol cypionate. Functionally they
do the same shit.
4. Bicalutamide: This is an anti-androgen that
has almost none of the side-effects of spironolactone or finasteride.
The girls I know who are on it are evangelical about it.
Are there HRT medications that don’t increase blood clot risk? I’m already at risk because of my blood pressure, and my doctor won’t prescribe HRT that increases clot risk while I’m on the medication – and I may never not be on the medication.
Absolutely.
The concerns surrounding venous thromboembolic events as a side-effect of hormone replacement therapy can mostly be traced back to one particular study known as the Women’s Health Initiative. This study was an enormous undertaking which, unfortunately, demonstrated significant adverse effects of the hormone therapies studied. As a result of this the use of hormone replacement therapy in postmenopausal cis women was dramatically reduced as the medical community began to question whether or not the therapy caused more harm than good.
Naturally, trans women have been suffering from this fall-out ever since.
What physicians seem to fail to recognize is that the study examined a very specific hormone regimen which was, arguably, outmoded at the time the study was conducted: It examined the use of conjugated equine estrogen (Premarin) with or without the use of medroxyprogesterone acetate. Neither of these drugs is regularly used for the treatment of transgender women.
The estrogen most commonly used to treat transgender women nowadays is 17β-estradiol either in pill form or in the form of a sticky patch that you apply to your skin. Esters of estrogen (e.g. estradiol valerate) are also sometimes used either in a pill form or as an intramuscular injection.
Transdermal estradiol patches are the gold standard when it comes to treating women who are at high risk of a venous thromboembolic event. It simply does not increase the risk of developing a venous thromboembolism. The only thing you should keep in mind is that patches are not always well tolerated because of the lifestyle changes required to keep them from falling off and the fact that they tend to irritate the skin.
It’s difficult to find hard numbers regarding the relative risk of venous thromboembolic events with regards to hypertension. The best I could find after an hour or so of searching was this study regarding VTE in lung cancer patients. Hypertension increased the risk by a factor of 1.8.
As far as the anti-androgen is concerned: The primary use for spironolactone for cisgender people is as an antihypertensive.
Even if the risk of thromboembolism was truly significant with modern hormone replacement therapy it wouldn’t justify what your doctor is doing to you. The fact is that mortality in the transgender community from suicide–caused in part due to the lack of access to hormone therapy–is substantial. The quality of life lost when a trans woman is denied hormone therapy is substantial. The fact that your doctor does not appear to be taking this into consideration when they weigh the risk of thromboembolism against not receiving necessary medical care is deeply concerning.
I strongly recommend that you seek a doctor who is more sensitive to your medical needs as a transgender woman.
Edit: Fixed a minor, but embarrassing, error.
oh wow this is so helpful & good info
Everyone who cares about transfem people please reblog this
I keep forgetting what the differences are in the over the counter pain relievers, so I made a handy chart.
This Is Important.
I always had really really horrible growing pains as a kid. Like, I clearly remember being curled up on the floor crying because it felt like some evil person had stuck a fork in my calf and was twisting it around like spaghetti. Mom always had me take ibuprofen for it, and when that didn’t do anything, she just gave me more.
Now the stuff barely works on me, even when I take it for the things it actually fixes.
Please, please, double-check to make sure you’re taking the right medicines for your pain.
My mom always gave me tylonel for period cramps as a kid and it never did anything. It’s nice to know now that she was literally giving me the least effective option
And please PLEASE note that as the chart says, acetaminophen “can be taken with NSAIDs”, which means you can take Tylenol/acetaminophen AND one of the other listed pain-relievers.
My mom has been a doctor for 40+ years, and her standard advice for headaches is, take two regular-strength Advil, and then if that doesn’t work, ALSO take two regular-strength Tylenol.
hey fellas last night i took a medication which is more or less the anxiety equivalent of a horse tranquilizer & essentially enterred the fifth dimension of sleepwalking in which i awoke but enterred a dissociative fit so strong i was really confused why my loving girlfriend was not my good friend and fellow viking bjorn, who i had to bring some furs to. also i might’ve cried about this. don’t remember
was informed i left out the best part of this 3am experience which was the bit where i, in tears, gestured to our dog and shouted, “i don’t know what this is!”
bruh you astral planed so hard you fell back into a past life
Bauer-Ross headed back to the Shoppers the next day with her receipt and says the manager offered a full refund, or exchange. She accepted an exchange under the condition that she could open the bottle in the store. When she did, she says it was also filled with pasta.
The flummoxed store manager then snatched a third bottle off the shelf and popped the cap, only to find more dried penne. A fourth bottle yielded a similar result.
ive been laughing uncontrollably about this story for a good five minutes or so
you know at first the manager’s just thinking she took out the pills and added the penne, and when she opened the second bottle in the store his mind just went
it wasn’t her?
My first suspicion would have been she did it too.
Just gonna reblog this out of gratitude because I actually did forget…
Fffffffff let me get right on that.
and then reblog for the next forgetful son of a bitch
I’m so great full for everyone that is reblogging this. I totally forgot to take mine
I think that there is some sort of unspoken fairy godparent thing where you see this, realize that you forgot your meds, and rebagel it because if you forgot someone else must have. And in our turn we all take care of each other, even if we don’t know it.
Steel Phoenix Studios 