Feeling stressed: progesterone and distress from some potential side effects (TMI possible)

[Kelly2509]

So I know there isn't a lot of hard data on progesterone when it comes to ladies like ourselves, but I am hoping maybe some of you might have experience with P that you might be able to shed some light on a question.  Also this feels like the safest place to ask a question like this.  Ultimately I am trying to determine if I need to reach out to my doc to discuss this.  Here's some context:  I am just over 9 months on hormone therapy and when I began I had several goals for it.  These included the usual suspects along with a couple things I would suspect aren't really "goals" for most girls (probably seen more as side effects I suppose), reduced libido and elimination of spontaneous erections (and I am probably unusual in that I want atrophy down there).  The short version for these is I am married to an effectively asexual woman and thought things would work smoother between us  if I were more like her (whether this was a healthy idea or not is a discussion for another time) and I get a lot of distress (some may characterize this as dysphoria) from spontaneous erections in addition to losing sleep going back to when I was a child.  Not sure if anyone else deliberately hit themselves in the crotch to try to make it go away, but that was where I was when I was young.

 

As I went through the first 8 months of HT I saw both of these effects to one degree or another which I saw as Very Good Things.  In May I began discussing adding P with my doc for the potential boost to feminization that it could bring and we penciled it in for closer to my 1 year HT-niversary.  In August when I went in for a checkup I had mentioned that I had developed problems with sleep and the subject of P was brought up as a potential "2 birds with one stone" option because my blood work had been good and stable for several months (E>200, T<15).  We decided to give it a shot _______ and within about a week I was getting much of the benefit to sleep I had hoped for.  I was sleeping deeper and falling back to sleep easier if I did wake up in the night.  My dreams were/are completely nutso, but I was getting the rest I needed.

 

Fast forward to this past week where I am about 5 weeks on P and I've started seeing a couple other things that aren't as welcome.  Libido has rebounded a bit, which I don't really want, but just by a small amount so it's not a huge deal as I did expect some of that when I began.  Let's just say this is unwelcome but tolerable.  The worse thing is I have started getting the spontaneous erections in the night again and it's messing up my sleep and stressing me out that things are being "exercised" outside my control and that somehow this means my T levels might be rebounding.  There may be a certain amount of paranoia going on, but stress is stress you know?  I am a kind-of-believer of the concept of testosterone poisoning as a thing, and picture it as kind of a calcification within my body like what you'd get from hard water running through old galvanized plumbing so the idea that I'm not flushing that stuff out of my system any more really bothers me. 

 

Anyway, where the actual question comes into play is considering my goals if I should be reaching out to my doc to discuss either doing some labs soon to see of the T is actually rebounding or if I should be considering dropping the P (which I am hesitant to do since it has been supporting my sleep and may eventually support all my other goals)?  Does anyone else have experience with P where they may have had the spontaneous erections return?  Is it potentially temporary?  Am I just being paranoid?  (honestly I'm hoping it's that last one haha)

 

Thanks for any insight you all might have!
Cheers

Kelly

Edited October 3, 2021 by Carolyn Marie
Dosage removed per Community Rules.

[Carolyn Marie]

Kelly, I don't have experience with Progesterone, but the questions you have are exactly the kinds of questions you should ask your doctor.  We can give you our experiences, but they may not be comparable to your situation, and neither would be anecdotes.  The doctor knows you, can look at your labs and knows what you want to accomplish.  We only know the latter.  So please do talk to your doctor.

 

Carolyn Marie

[Kelly2509]

@Carolyn Marie First, thanks for fixing the dosage thing, I had forgotten about that.  Thanks for the response, I didn't want to tell the doc something was up and then have him take me off it or something without at least doing a little homework to see if I was overreacting and drawing from others' experiences has been my most reliable source over the last year.  I worry about something coming up that won't allow me to continue with my treatment plan so every time I ask him anything I usually try to exhaust every resource I have before reaching out.  I may give it a few days to see if things settle back down and if not I will message my doc.

[Kelly2509]

I did speak to my doctor and he said my T should not be rebounding, and being on P as well it should be even more suppressed, if anything.  He said it's likely a temporary thing but ordered some labs just to be safe.  He said he would recommend giving it a few weeks before doing the labs to see if it continues or if it winds up being a temporary thing.  So the plan for now is to wait and see and go in for some new labs probably towards the end of the month or early November.

 

Thought I would share in case anyone winds up looking for answers on something similar someday

[Carolyn Marie]

Thanks for the update, Kelly.  I hope all is well after your next set of lab work.

 

HUGS

 

Carolyn Marie

[Kelly2509]

@Carolyn Marie thanks!  Someone gave me some good advice

 

I do feel better having talked to the doc about it.  My brain tends to take things and run away with them and he reeled me back in

[Kelly2509]

little update on this for the completionist in me
 

As the Doc suggested my issues were indeed mostly temporary.  Still have a night here and there where things get uncomfortable but generally things are pretty much back to normal.  I did go in for some labs just to be safe (and because I like to look at the numbers) and everything has come back good.  My E is starting to level off in a good place and T is still well suppressed so everything is cool.