Claire CJS
20171222 - transition milestone - first estrogen injection - supplies - 24251866
The estrogen levels have been extremely poor, so Clio made moves to switch to injectable estrogen, which is safer and more effective. And today is the first day she can finally inject! Clio wanted to get help, so we went over to Puppy's and Clio got drunk before being able to handle her first injection. It ended up taking her a couple weeks to learn to do them herself. Clio is not crazy about needles!
NEEDLE GEEKERY: (Imagine this read in the voice of William S. Burroughs.) We do our injections every 5 days, aiming for 7mg of estradiol valerate. That means injecting .35mL, given that our concentration is 20mg/ml. We do intramuscular (IM) injections in the thigh, with a mere 1.0" needle, instead of the recommended 1.5" needle. We get away with the smaller needle due to being slim.
First, we wash our hands in the sink, all fancy-like. Then we gather all 3 (sometimes 2) needles, a band-aid, an alcohol swab, and open *everything* up. Then we decide where to inject. We use the alcohol swab to swab off the tops of the ampules we going to draw from, as well as the part of our body we are going to inject in.
Needle 1 of 3: We inject about 0.4ml air into the ampule to maintain pressure. We draw estrogen using the standard 21g needle that came with our 100-pack of syringes. Lots of air bubbles, as it is suspended in oil, unlike most injectibles that are suspended in water. It's kind of a pain in the ass, and hard to get an exact amount. Especially with the fact that we're going to pop this needle off. Thus, you have to suck what is in the needle tip in, if you don't want to waste the drug you are injecting. It can be like 0.05mL! We pop off our needle.
[Needle 2 of 3: Although we were not currently injecting progesterone at the time of the picture, we later started doing that, so we then would have to pop on a filter needle, because that stuff came from a glass ampule, and you need to draw through a filter needle to ensure that you don't inject microparticles of glass into your muscle, which could give you cysts. We draw our progesterone into the mix, though the amount for P isn't as precise, as it's effects are more indirect, and its price very cheap. But proper injectable progesterone administration requires gluteal injection to last 3.5 days, and just throwing it on top our normal estrogen injection really only keeps us good for 1.0 days. Then, after that, we would pop off the filter needle.]
Needle 3 of 3: We pop on a 25g needle: This is a much thinner, more painless needle. It would be suuuuper annoying to draw through a 25g needle--Like trying to scuba dive using a coffee straw for oxygen. But for injecting in, it's not so bad. It only takes about 5 seconds to inject. Anyway, we pop on an injection needle: 1.0" for IM injection, 1.5" if doing gluteal injection. We shove the needle in. We only aspirate and pull out to check for blood for gluteal injections; for IM thigh injections, it's so statistically unlikely, that we choose not to worry about it. The biggest consequence would be ruining a few day's supply of estrogen. We inject the stuff, and not too fast. We wait a few seconds. We pull the needle out. We grab a band-aid and put it on, occasionally re-using the alcohol swab from earlier, if things get bloody. We dispose of the sharps & blood in a sealable container, drop the rest in the recycle bin, and put everything back into our kit boxes.
Transition Progress at this point: On hormones since 8/1 (4.75 months). Dosage doubled for 1.75 months, which brought T down to 19. But E was still a miserably low 50. So Clio started injections today! Full-time female since 9/15 (3 months). Publicly out as trans since 10/11 (2.5 months). Legally female, federally, since 12/21 (1 day). Boobs sore/growing since 9/4 (3.5 months). Had seen endo/primary therapist 5X, and secondary therapists 8X. Weight down to 142lbs (55 down from 197). Hair removal includes 25 electrolysis treatments totaling 19.25 hours; 27 laser hair removal sessions (45 area treatments: 14/13/12/10 mouth/goatee/face/neck, 7 leg/chest/armpit, 5 Brazilian/ear); and bi-weekly at-home IPL on arms since 6/17 (6 months). Latisse for eyelash lengthening since 4/17 (8 months). 2 dental implants. Pierced ears. Dyed/layered hair (no haircuts since 1/2015--2.75yrs). Female wardrobe replacement was up to 419 items. Total transition expenditures were over $13,000 at this point.
Delestrogen, estradiol, estradiol valerate, injectable estrogen, injection needles, supplies, syringes.
HRT. LuerLok. trans. trans milestone.
upstairs, Clio and Carolyn's house, Alexandria, Virginia.
December 22, 2017.
... Read my blog at clintjcl at wordpress dot com
... Read Carolyn's blog at CarolynCASLat wordpress dot com
20171222 - transition milestone - first estrogen injection - supplies - 24251866
The estrogen levels have been extremely poor, so Clio made moves to switch to injectable estrogen, which is safer and more effective. And today is the first day she can finally inject! Clio wanted to get help, so we went over to Puppy's and Clio got drunk before being able to handle her first injection. It ended up taking her a couple weeks to learn to do them herself. Clio is not crazy about needles!
NEEDLE GEEKERY: (Imagine this read in the voice of William S. Burroughs.) We do our injections every 5 days, aiming for 7mg of estradiol valerate. That means injecting .35mL, given that our concentration is 20mg/ml. We do intramuscular (IM) injections in the thigh, with a mere 1.0" needle, instead of the recommended 1.5" needle. We get away with the smaller needle due to being slim.
First, we wash our hands in the sink, all fancy-like. Then we gather all 3 (sometimes 2) needles, a band-aid, an alcohol swab, and open *everything* up. Then we decide where to inject. We use the alcohol swab to swab off the tops of the ampules we going to draw from, as well as the part of our body we are going to inject in.
Needle 1 of 3: We inject about 0.4ml air into the ampule to maintain pressure. We draw estrogen using the standard 21g needle that came with our 100-pack of syringes. Lots of air bubbles, as it is suspended in oil, unlike most injectibles that are suspended in water. It's kind of a pain in the ass, and hard to get an exact amount. Especially with the fact that we're going to pop this needle off. Thus, you have to suck what is in the needle tip in, if you don't want to waste the drug you are injecting. It can be like 0.05mL! We pop off our needle.
[Needle 2 of 3: Although we were not currently injecting progesterone at the time of the picture, we later started doing that, so we then would have to pop on a filter needle, because that stuff came from a glass ampule, and you need to draw through a filter needle to ensure that you don't inject microparticles of glass into your muscle, which could give you cysts. We draw our progesterone into the mix, though the amount for P isn't as precise, as it's effects are more indirect, and its price very cheap. But proper injectable progesterone administration requires gluteal injection to last 3.5 days, and just throwing it on top our normal estrogen injection really only keeps us good for 1.0 days. Then, after that, we would pop off the filter needle.]
Needle 3 of 3: We pop on a 25g needle: This is a much thinner, more painless needle. It would be suuuuper annoying to draw through a 25g needle--Like trying to scuba dive using a coffee straw for oxygen. But for injecting in, it's not so bad. It only takes about 5 seconds to inject. Anyway, we pop on an injection needle: 1.0" for IM injection, 1.5" if doing gluteal injection. We shove the needle in. We only aspirate and pull out to check for blood for gluteal injections; for IM thigh injections, it's so statistically unlikely, that we choose not to worry about it. The biggest consequence would be ruining a few day's supply of estrogen. We inject the stuff, and not too fast. We wait a few seconds. We pull the needle out. We grab a band-aid and put it on, occasionally re-using the alcohol swab from earlier, if things get bloody. We dispose of the sharps & blood in a sealable container, drop the rest in the recycle bin, and put everything back into our kit boxes.
Transition Progress at this point: On hormones since 8/1 (4.75 months). Dosage doubled for 1.75 months, which brought T down to 19. But E was still a miserably low 50. So Clio started injections today! Full-time female since 9/15 (3 months). Publicly out as trans since 10/11 (2.5 months). Legally female, federally, since 12/21 (1 day). Boobs sore/growing since 9/4 (3.5 months). Had seen endo/primary therapist 5X, and secondary therapists 8X. Weight down to 142lbs (55 down from 197). Hair removal includes 25 electrolysis treatments totaling 19.25 hours; 27 laser hair removal sessions (45 area treatments: 14/13/12/10 mouth/goatee/face/neck, 7 leg/chest/armpit, 5 Brazilian/ear); and bi-weekly at-home IPL on arms since 6/17 (6 months). Latisse for eyelash lengthening since 4/17 (8 months). 2 dental implants. Pierced ears. Dyed/layered hair (no haircuts since 1/2015--2.75yrs). Female wardrobe replacement was up to 419 items. Total transition expenditures were over $13,000 at this point.
Delestrogen, estradiol, estradiol valerate, injectable estrogen, injection needles, supplies, syringes.
HRT. LuerLok. trans. trans milestone.
upstairs, Clio and Carolyn's house, Alexandria, Virginia.
December 22, 2017.
... Read my blog at clintjcl at wordpress dot com
... Read Carolyn's blog at CarolynCASLat wordpress dot com