51 years old.
Starting levels 3 years ago were
TT 175
E2 19
Shbg 13
I went on pellets and the first year was spectacular. No ai and no hcg. Had energy and cared about things again. Got off the couch and finally was successful working out regularly. Lost 55 lbs and looked better than when I was 20. Got off all meds (cholesterol, reflux, etc.). Cut cholesterol in half, blood pressure of an 18 year old, etc.
I have never had a problem with sex drive but wifey tells me I was noticeably harder. She is on trt also and running high t so suddenly we were like rabbits. Sometimes 2-3 times a day. I thought I had hit the mother load.
Year 2 was not as great but still good. Would get 6-8 pellets every 3-4 months. When tt started dropping and reached 500-600 I would reload so we were overlapping. Unfortunately didn’t check e2 after the initial test. The week after I got reloaded I felt great then would have a kind of blah week thn slowly would build back to feeling really good.
But I seemed to not be quite as good as early and one time I reloaded too much (tt700 and got 8 pellets). About a month later I went through a couple months of super high emotions. Felt terrible so I started running lower doses after that but then never felt great like the first year. Also put about 15 lbs back on. Sticking to a diet just seems harder.
4 weeks ago got a little higher dose to see if I could get feeling more passion for life, etc. the day I got it I had a huge anxiety attack. Valium, etc finally got it under control but it was awful. Over the next few weeks I struggled with anxiety every day. Not over anything significant. Just sitting with the family watching tv and I get an adrenalin rush and fear that the attack is coming again. Got on an airplane and got right back off, cancelled the trip. Got a test and e2 check and it was
TT 936
E2 36
Had complete physical from gp and everything was fine.
Then the anxiety let up but then I struggled w what I am guessing is depression. If you haven’t felt this you don’t know what it is. You imagine anxiety being like when you are anxious about something or depression being sad. The anxiety I had felt chemical and horrible and there is nothing to reason with.
The depression is like the blah, don’t care feeling you get when your t is off but turned WAY up. Can’t see anything enjoyable in my future. Imagine 30-40 more years of feeling like this with nothing to do but try to get out of bed and struggle all day not to have anxiety.
Then after 4 weeks (and some serious prayer) it started to break. About the time it was getting better I did another bw and it was
TT 683
E2 31
This was only 2 weeks later. Seems weird that I was 900at week 2 and 680 week 4. I would typically be 600-700 at week 9-10.
Anyway. Talked to doc. He is very sharp reproductive endo and he suggested a new oral hcg he is starting to use with patients. He wants to get me on hcg and lower my pellet dose to augment what I can make. Discuses ai and he was cautious about that and cited the recent study from finklestein on t and e. My concern with that study is that they gave the ai group 1mg a day so low and behold they tanked their estrogen and didn’t feel good.
Any thoughts? Could e of 36 really be an issue?