Jul (they/she)

Make sure to do a test during peak and a test during trough.

I do that and then average them. They are always significantly different and i use patches which give a more steady dose than injections.

Also, I’m not entirely convinced that the values most doctors who are not specialists use are correct for trans people. If you aren’t seeing an endocrinologist with at least a little specialty in sex hormones, I’d do that and see if they can recommend the right levels for your body rather than the general numbers that were always very conservative, and came from cis women’s levels rather than what trans people need since there’s usually no funding to research trans people.

I was lucky enough to start HRT with a general practitioner with a lot of experience with trans people during her residency and most of her career. But she moved on to another specialty due to the difficulty making ends meet as a good doctor. I’m on the lookout myself for an endo with good experience to consult one of these days.

Same. I have had a few types of headache issues most of my life and no one believed the pain was that bad because I don’t express it the way people expect when in severe pain. So, I always thought I had a low tolerance until a doctor freaked out at some severe tibial stress fractures that I was still being asked to run on them. And it took faking a painful yell when the doctor was manipulating it in the first visit to get the bone scan ordered to get to that freak out. I just don’t uncontrollably verbalize severe pain or fully shut down or things like that like neurotypicals.

Fortunately, I’ve also got autism… That’s fortunate, right?

Considering the community this is posted in, I think it’s fair to mention (if maybe not directly link to) there are devices that decode DRM and other encoding and pass on a stream that can be watched without needing all of that. The ones I saw were under $100. Though it’s definitely possible that these may get cracked down on eventually either by customs or changes in the DRM that requires internet connectivity to decode which has been discussed though seems dumb to need internet to watch a broadcast signal, but greed often causes stupid things like that.

An antenna? If you don’t have a TV, you can get a tuner dongle and antenna for your PC and use VLC or other streaming video clients. Unfortunately, the services that take over-the-air signals and put them online usually get killed off by lawsuits. But tuner dongles and half decent, compact antennas are pretty cheap.

If it’s POSIX compliant then it will work on all versions of Linux/Unix. Otherwise it depends on specific implementations that have branched for decades.

I was just chatting with some people about how I’ve discovered how bad habit and conditioning affect neurotypical people. This was in the context of visual, audio, and other gender cues that cause NT people to misgender trans and non binary people. I had recently discovered how the gender conditioning can make it difficult for NT people to change when things are automatic in their brains. They aren’t used to having to concentrate to remember words like i do, so they don’t have that easy place to inject conscious decisions.

So yeah, there are some things we are superior at and if NT people would just accommodate our disadvantages, our advantages could benefit them. But the current political atmosphere is isolationist and individualism, so they want everything to benefit them since they can’t stand to collaborate to get the benefits we offer.

Again, adverse effects doesn’t mean death, the fact that the description you posed has that last sentence is the alarmist thing and only applies to certain drugs, of course.

The difference in absorption rates between oral and rectal administration can be as much as double or triple or more in some cases. For example I remember reading a study from the 70s or 80s on methylprednisolone. The absorption rate orally was about 90%, but rectally was only around 35% likely due to bacteria in the rectum decomposing the drug before it could make it into the blood.

So, over the long term the difference in dose could have a significant impact on health. Getting 3 times more or less of any drug, even something relatively safe, will likely mean “adverse effects”. With estradiol this could mean greatly increased side effects for overdose like nipple soreness or mood swings, or greatly decreased effect for underdose meaning testosterone takes over again and hair loss and body hair growth restart. These are “adverse effects”, but are not likely to be deadly, but still considered overdose/underdose.

Possibly, but I don’t see Google doing that either. It’s not about where the app comes from really. The thing they are going to restrict is the developer. A developer can not have their app installed on a certified phone, regardless of where the user got the app, if the developer is not registered.

So, since there are no regulations to allow a user to install apps from any chosen developer, only from any chosen app store, there likely will be no regulatory recourse like Apple is facing as mentioned by the OP.

This is different, by design. Sideloading and alternate app stores are still perfectly fine. It’s just that the developer has to give a bunch of personal into to Google in order for their app not to be rejected by the phone itself. Middleman doesn’t matter which is where most if the regulations are. Problem is that many open source apps don’t have a developer willing to spend the time and money or give up their privacy in order to publish an app they don’t make money on. So it’s designed to kill off FOSS apps.

More evidence that although I love the idea of the MIT license, it is not good when large corporate interests and their money get involved. It’s too easy for the code to get scooped up and relicensed or just hidden away. Copyleft licensed projects are the only ones I’ll work on anymore.

Nope I don’t agree. Language has meaning to people, and has no obligation to past meanings or logic. If it did then we wouldn’t have been able to reclaim the use of the word gay which has changed meanings multiple times just in my lifetime.

Overdose doesn’t mean die, it means getting a larger dose in your blood than the labeled dosage. Over a long period of time dosing too high, there may be side effects. Sorry if I used medical terminology, but I work in healthcare so it’s common terminology there. I sometimes forget that the media has warped the meaning of some of these terms.

But that’s how language works. Things mean what the majority of people say they mean. Otherwise, everyone would still be using the n word because it wouldn’t have a negative meaning. It’s about communication, not absolute logic.

Can and should are two very different things. The two have different absorption rates for different things. You may overdose or it may be totally ineffective. There may be toxic contaminants that taken orally might not be absorbed much, so its relatively safe, but taken rectally might be absorbed into the blood stream. There’s also the sanitation issue. The mouth is generally better at capturing and keeping infections out of the body than the rectum, so you may need to sanitize the pills which might be difficult if you don’t want them to dissolve. And relatedly, there’s the matter of the inactive ingredients. They’re designed to be swallowed, but may cause issues left behind in the rectum. Most pills that are swallowed just use starches which isn’t a big deal, but to make things dissolve quickly there are other ingredients including sometimes sugars which could encourage microorganism growth if you don’t sanitize them or some ingredients may trigger diarrhea or other reactions.

There’s usually not research done on a drug taken sublingually as to how it would affect a person rectally, so it’s usually not going to be well known.

That said, ask your doctor. If there is any data about doing it, they would be more likely to know.

Unfortunately, the current state of the patent office is extremely understaffed and mostly nontechnical. So, there’s not enough qualified examiners to examine patents, not just in software, but medical devices, voting machines, and lots of other industries. So essentially if a patent is submitted by a major company, it just gets rubber stamped. And it’s up to the courts to sort it out. Unfortunately that sorting out is biased and understaffed, too, so usually the initial case will go to the patent holder by default and it’s not until an appeal or two on those biases and technical misinterpretations that it can be invalidated. So it’s rare for a smaller company to be able to spend that much money to invalidate an obvious idea like this. Of course this is by design to give large corporations an unfair advantage. If they want some tech, they just sue for a stupid patent, wait until the company either folds and then they can steal it legally, or goes bankrupt fighting it and they can acquire them hostilely.

I’m getting mine in 2 weeks, but getting PPT so no scrotal tissue is used as labia will be made from the shaft since that’s not needed for the vagina, but I expect similar experience with the clit at first from what I’ve read.

But for me, I’ve actually had what I’ve been calling phantom vagina/vulva most of my life. Basically, the feeling that the peritoneum and area being the scrotum should have an opening and the shaft should be a clit. So I’m hopeful that putting things the way my brain thinks they’re supposed to be will make it easier for me at least.

But everything I’ve read has told me your experience is normal and will change over time. But it will likely take years and even then relapses of it may come up here and there. For now, take comfort in what has improved And I’ve heard you should spend time looking at and exploring touching yourself with a nonsexual intent to help train your brain on what’s actually there. I was reading to use your dilating time for that at the very least as well as time after masturbating when things are especially sensitive but you’re relaxed.

Almost every night…

As i mentioned, DIY with doctor’s monitoring if you can find a doctor with sliding scale fees and pay cash. Or if you don’t mind your parents seeing the trans diagnosis, then DIY with monitoring by your doctor but find an inexpensive/sliding scale lab for the blood tests if you want to hide that. Or if your insurance will allow privacy for adult dependents, just be careful if you need an auth for the type of HRT you get, and don’t use mail order pharmacies. But if you choose DIY and get them from supplement companies, be sure to research the manufacturer as there are lots of fakes, heavy metal contamination, etc., in the supplement industry.

Yeah totally get that. Just want to give other options you should look into first before risking fully DIY.