Another great and sobering article. One could almost imagine you do science communication for a living! ;)
I am unfortunate enough to live in a country where the wait times for even a first assessment for diagnosis – which is a prerequisite for any kind of help that is not just counselling – is counted in years. This is very disheartening. Most of my slow (and the extremely abrupt) process of accepting my trans-identity has, so far, been very positive, but this...
I haven't started HRT (DIY or otherwise) yet, but if I hadn't known there was such a thing as DIY, I might well have given up before even doing the deep soul-searching I've done these past few weeks (months, years) and accepted my "fate" – that is to say: given in to despair. Then I would maybe never have experienced the positive feelings, the giddy contentment, I got when I first saw someone I recognised in the mirror, one ordinary Tuesday evening in September. Thinking that, realising it, causes fractures to appear in my heart.
I mean, I still might give up, though I hope not. This is hard, as anyone reading here can probably testify, even when the deck is not stacked against you. The existence of DIY gives me the hope I need to seriously consider a way forward, and articles like this one – compassionate, to the point and serious – are just what I needed to make more sense of my options. So, again (from one doctor to another ;)) – thank you Zoe!
And if any DIY lab activist reads this, thank you too, for giving me and others hope, whether we use your services or not! I hope you will be redundant one day, but until such a time, you have my gratitude and support.
Thank you! I was not aware of this option. I'll add it to the long-and-growing list of things I had no idea about, that I want to look into! :) I love my socialised health-care, but I sometimes hate the politicians who think they know how it should be run. DIY activists and GenderGP (as far as I can tell, skimming their page), provide an important political counter-point.
Taking a step back, I wanted to say that I find the whole field of DIY pharmaceutics very fascinating, both politically and academically. My background is in Physics, but I've always had a soft spot for the social sciences (and for anarchists), and a friend of mine has written a lot of articles about this topic. I don't think he's studied DIY HRT, though. I'll have to ask him (when I feel I'm in a good place for the possible follow-up discussion...). It was inspirational and fascinating reading, these idealist bio-hackers, their methodologies and motivations. However, it is of course also lived experience – actual lives at stake.
I don't know where I was going with this, but I will definitely read his articles with a different set of eyes next time. I think it is fascinating research, and potentially important, but I'm conflicted. I was not expecting to ever be this close to the matter.
I was specifically instructed by a nurse at my doc's office to inject a bit of air into the vial when I went on injections a little over a month ago. In one or two of the injections I've done, I've forgotten to add air, and I've noticed little bubbles entering the vial at the cap as I draw the solution into the syringe. My question is, doesn't air get in the vial anyway if you don't inject a bit of air in? If you were to constantly draw up all of the solution in the vial, the pressure in the vial with no solution would be quite a bit lower than outside, causing air to bleed in around the needle or when you remove it.
I'm not questioning your statement that air is a potential contaminant. I'm just thinking its kinda unavoidable.
So, I don't know if you remember flying on an airplane when covid was bad, but my wife and I went to Spain last year for my ffs. That's an eight hour flight, and the Spanish government required all inbound planes to require masking.
And yet, they served two in-flight meals. Which we all had to take our masks off for. What's the deal with that?
By reducing the length of time we were all maskless, it reduced the maximum potential amount of virus in the air of the plane, which made it less likely for anyone to get infected, and would mean that an infection is likely to be less significant if it happened. So, we masked the whole time, except when we were eating, and that's still good public health.
Same principle applies here. Adding less air reduces the likelihood that something beats the antimicrobials.
Another great and sobering article. One could almost imagine you do science communication for a living! ;)
I am unfortunate enough to live in a country where the wait times for even a first assessment for diagnosis – which is a prerequisite for any kind of help that is not just counselling – is counted in years. This is very disheartening. Most of my slow (and the extremely abrupt) process of accepting my trans-identity has, so far, been very positive, but this...
I haven't started HRT (DIY or otherwise) yet, but if I hadn't known there was such a thing as DIY, I might well have given up before even doing the deep soul-searching I've done these past few weeks (months, years) and accepted my "fate" – that is to say: given in to despair. Then I would maybe never have experienced the positive feelings, the giddy contentment, I got when I first saw someone I recognised in the mirror, one ordinary Tuesday evening in September. Thinking that, realising it, causes fractures to appear in my heart.
I mean, I still might give up, though I hope not. This is hard, as anyone reading here can probably testify, even when the deck is not stacked against you. The existence of DIY gives me the hope I need to seriously consider a way forward, and articles like this one – compassionate, to the point and serious – are just what I needed to make more sense of my options. So, again (from one doctor to another ;)) – thank you Zoe!
And if any DIY lab activist reads this, thank you too, for giving me and others hope, whether we use your services or not! I hope you will be redundant one day, but until such a time, you have my gratitude and support.
Love and light! <3
/Ida
If you're in the EU, for instance, there are other options, like GenderGP.
But yeah. When our medicine is deliberately underfunded and undercut, it's evil. Plain evil.
Thank you! I was not aware of this option. I'll add it to the long-and-growing list of things I had no idea about, that I want to look into! :) I love my socialised health-care, but I sometimes hate the politicians who think they know how it should be run. DIY activists and GenderGP (as far as I can tell, skimming their page), provide an important political counter-point.
Taking a step back, I wanted to say that I find the whole field of DIY pharmaceutics very fascinating, both politically and academically. My background is in Physics, but I've always had a soft spot for the social sciences (and for anarchists), and a friend of mine has written a lot of articles about this topic. I don't think he's studied DIY HRT, though. I'll have to ask him (when I feel I'm in a good place for the possible follow-up discussion...). It was inspirational and fascinating reading, these idealist bio-hackers, their methodologies and motivations. However, it is of course also lived experience – actual lives at stake.
I don't know where I was going with this, but I will definitely read his articles with a different set of eyes next time. I think it is fascinating research, and potentially important, but I'm conflicted. I was not expecting to ever be this close to the matter.
Question about adding air to a vial:
I was specifically instructed by a nurse at my doc's office to inject a bit of air into the vial when I went on injections a little over a month ago. In one or two of the injections I've done, I've forgotten to add air, and I've noticed little bubbles entering the vial at the cap as I draw the solution into the syringe. My question is, doesn't air get in the vial anyway if you don't inject a bit of air in? If you were to constantly draw up all of the solution in the vial, the pressure in the vial with no solution would be quite a bit lower than outside, causing air to bleed in around the needle or when you remove it.
I'm not questioning your statement that air is a potential contaminant. I'm just thinking its kinda unavoidable.
No, you're absolutely correct! It's about volume.
So, I don't know if you remember flying on an airplane when covid was bad, but my wife and I went to Spain last year for my ffs. That's an eight hour flight, and the Spanish government required all inbound planes to require masking.
And yet, they served two in-flight meals. Which we all had to take our masks off for. What's the deal with that?
By reducing the length of time we were all maskless, it reduced the maximum potential amount of virus in the air of the plane, which made it less likely for anyone to get infected, and would mean that an infection is likely to be less significant if it happened. So, we masked the whole time, except when we were eating, and that's still good public health.
Same principle applies here. Adding less air reduces the likelihood that something beats the antimicrobials.