Supermansings
New Member
I everybody. New to the forums. Need some advice/help. A little about me: I'm a 42-year-old emergency physician who is been on testosterone replacement therapy for about 11 months. I think I may have gotten trapped into the easy way out by taking TRT. When I separated from active-duty Air Force in 2013 and started my civilian job, I was overwhelmed, depressed, and injured with a chronic nagging sciatica. A good friend of mine from the military had stopped practicing emergency medicine and had gone into an online concierge TRT business. Initially, when I found out he was doing this, I had my testosterone checked and it was around 500 total. for a while, I ignored it because I knew that that couldn't be the source of my problems. After about a year and a half, I was up 40 pounds, unhappier than ever with my job, and drinking too much. I decided to get rechecked and my total testosterone levels were in the 320s. Though looking back,I realize that it was my lifestyle that was physically driving my testosterone down, it seemed easier to go ahead and blame everything on my low T. Through my friend, I began TRT , Injecting a total of 100 mg of testosterone cypionate divided twice weekly. At the same time, I cut back on my alcohol intake, started eating clean, and went back to the gym. I dropped 30 pounds and for the first few months I felt like the king of the world. I have always been "high strong" with some occasional mild anxiety. This was completely resolved during the first few months, and I felt like I was breathing for the first time in a long time. Everyone noticed that my mood was improved, especially my wife and kids. My morning erections were so strong sometimes they were really painful. At my first follow-up lab studies, he noted that my testosterone was in the 600s but my estrogen levels had creeped up some to the high 30s. He started me on arimidex , 0.5 mg twice weekly on the day of my injections which we increased to 60mg twice a week. At some point during this process I noted that I wasn't feeling as good as I had the first couple of months. I wish that I had kept a diary because I'm not sure exactly when the symptoms started to creep back. They were still not as intense as prior and I was still maintaining in the gym. We had a follow up set of labs earlier this year and my total testosterone was in the mid to high 800s but my estrogen level had dropped to 13. He advised that I go to a half a milligram of the AI once weekly after allowing the AI to "wash out" for a week to 10 days. At some point during this time, I started having significant anxiety. I was having hot flashes so significant that i would soak through my clothes at work. I describe the anxiety as an internal eye that will not stop running around inside of me checking to see if I'm OK. I even have a hard time focusing on conversations because I'm so lost in my own head when this is happening. I get strange tinglings to my left arm and face, and being a position, I suppose that this is feeding into the anxiety. Unfortunately, while my symptoms were beginning to ramp up, I could not contact my friend. I found out in the middle of all this that he committed suicide.
So now I am floating through this journey on my own. I have been back-and-forth trying to decide if my symptoms were secondary to elevated estrogen or significantly depressed estrogen. I have been tweaking on and off of the AI trying to find a symptomatic sweet spot. I seem to have found it for about a month, but this weekend the symptoms returned. On my own, I had dropped my testosterone dosage back to the original dose and discontinued the AI trying to find the feeling that was there in the beginning. I took a quarter of a pill yesterday as the symptoms were really starting to ramp. I still didn't sleep well last night, but maybe slightly better today than yesterday. In the short-term, I'm going to try taking the anastrozole a quarter of a milligram every third day and continue my testosterone at 50mg twice weekly.
What I would really like to do is , since I'm out here floating alone, is to come off of the testosterone completely and see if I can restart. I have read through 1 million threads on PCT and found Defy's protocol with the HCG, nolva and clomid. I have ordered this meds, but just saw an updated thread today where apparently they are recommending hCG for two weeks followed by Clomid for 28 days and then off. Curious to see if anyone has done this exact protocol and their success with it. I would like to give myself a year of actually living right to see what my Natural testosterone levels really are. I am fearful that the symptoms that have been bothering me will worsen dramatically on the restart and I'm curious for some expert advice. My friend in town is a urologist and Is happy to prescribe me testosterone supplementation, however, he really doesn't know much about dialing things in. We were talking about this, and he told me he doesn't even check estrogen on the guys he is treating. So I would in essence, be experimenting on myself since there are no people doing this in small-town Indiana. Your thoughts?
So now I am floating through this journey on my own. I have been back-and-forth trying to decide if my symptoms were secondary to elevated estrogen or significantly depressed estrogen. I have been tweaking on and off of the AI trying to find a symptomatic sweet spot. I seem to have found it for about a month, but this weekend the symptoms returned. On my own, I had dropped my testosterone dosage back to the original dose and discontinued the AI trying to find the feeling that was there in the beginning. I took a quarter of a pill yesterday as the symptoms were really starting to ramp. I still didn't sleep well last night, but maybe slightly better today than yesterday. In the short-term, I'm going to try taking the anastrozole a quarter of a milligram every third day and continue my testosterone at 50mg twice weekly.
What I would really like to do is , since I'm out here floating alone, is to come off of the testosterone completely and see if I can restart. I have read through 1 million threads on PCT and found Defy's protocol with the HCG, nolva and clomid. I have ordered this meds, but just saw an updated thread today where apparently they are recommending hCG for two weeks followed by Clomid for 28 days and then off. Curious to see if anyone has done this exact protocol and their success with it. I would like to give myself a year of actually living right to see what my Natural testosterone levels really are. I am fearful that the symptoms that have been bothering me will worsen dramatically on the restart and I'm curious for some expert advice. My friend in town is a urologist and Is happy to prescribe me testosterone supplementation, however, he really doesn't know much about dialing things in. We were talking about this, and he told me he doesn't even check estrogen on the guys he is treating. So I would in essence, be experimenting on myself since there are no people doing this in small-town Indiana. Your thoughts?
