luna naumer mateos

LENA'S DAUGHTERS

Whenever I speak with my trans sisters about our experience with hormone therapy, there are many ways our paths cross and differ, but mostly we all agree that we never felt that the people who were in charge of our medical treatment were listening to us. Still, the knowledge on what is an efficient way to provide hormones to trans women is scattered, full of misinformation which only leads to growing disappointment and frustration.
First of all, I want to clarify that trans women have barely any options for hormones for themselves. When we get oestrogen, the instructions mention that the product is for menopausal women. When we get progesterone, it’s made to balance period hormones and usually prescribed 10 days a month. All the testosterone blockers are for different problems for men. We are nowhere to be found in the medical system, and this gap is reflected in our experience.
Many trans women, in search of feeling more comfortable with themselves, decide to start hormone therapy to switch the levels of our sexed hormones. We aim to lower our testosterone levels and raise our oestrogen levels. This provides many changes in our body, mostly satisfactory, but many doctors will also prescribe unhealthy medication that lowers our testosterone levels but the side effects are unbearable for most people. I have been taking hormones for more than 3 years. I started slowly with oestrogen with the help of a trans health clinic in Amsterdam. A volunteer clinic run by a trans woman doctor who, after transitioning was mistreated by the medical community and had to quit her job. She, for a long time, has been providing information for trans women to choose their own regime by being aware of all the positive and negative effects of each medication and dose. This was the perfect start for me, I was able to slowly understand what I desired and that made me feel like I had control over my transition. Unfortunately the clinic was hit hard during the pandemic and had to close for a long period. I had to ask my general practitioner to provide me with hormones. It was a tough fight, because they kept saying that they didn’t know anything about hormones and also didn’t want to learn. Not having the clinic anymore and with such resistant healthcare providers, I feared I would run out of hormones and I would be forced to stop. Not having access to hormones has taken many trans women’s lives.
After almost two years of oestrogen monotherapy (meaning only taking oestrogen) I decided to try testosterone blockers and see what would come out of it. The effects were mostly negative, my libido was nonexistent, my mood was always low and the positive effects were not worth it. After 10 months I stopped because my mental health and my sexual life were completely destroyed and I had to. Sadly, coming out of these very strong medications also has side effects and it completely unbalanced my body. I felt that the two years of my transition were lost and my body was reverting back to myself before hormones. My mental health was severely damaged. After a couple of months I had an orchiectomy (the removal of the testicles). This was a decision I was comfortable with but I also felt I had no choice. This was the best way to keep my testosterone levels low. Thankfully this was a turnaround in my hormonal balance, and after that I decided it was time to take control of my hormones once again. I wanted not only to take control but also to find ways to really move forward and also feel comfortable with my body. After more than a year of speaking with other trans women online, I had found a large amount of information which helped me read my own hormone levels, know what to pay attention to, understand what I was experiencing and have community experience to guide me. All of this provided more clarity than the outdated and poorly researched papers which haven’t been updated since the 70’s.
After years of research and having my orchiectomy done, I decided to try injections. For awhile I noticed how all of the other options were not only tedious, which are required to be taken two or three times a day, but also never really provided great results. I was ready to see if injections were the best option for me. The idea was really tempting,I was only required to inject once or twice a week which would provide stable levels, enough for a successful monotherapy. At first I tried it with a friend of mine. She had always been taking injections since she is from the US. She taught me how to do it and even gave me my first shot. Afterwards, I got myself my own vial.
Even though injections are very common in the US, the EU hasn’t legalised this method of oestrogen for almost 20 years, leaving a lot of trans women in Europe on a gap compared to our North American sisters. I, as many other trans women here, are forced to ‘go DIY’, meaning taking home made hormones. This sounds as scary as it is and for a very long time I was also scared of it, but the two main people providing these hormones (one based in Europe and one in South America) are widely known to the community and the experiences are not only really positive, but also many people report not having health issues, Earning a reputation as being a fairly safe option. We all would prefer to have this controlled by the pharmaceutical institutions and even covered by insurance, but there is no way we can access it. Even the compounded oestrogen oils to inject made in pharmacies have shown to be more unstable because European pharmacies are not used to making this product. Unfortunately not even the few legal options are reliable.
The European based provider is a 60 year old trans woman who, after having an allergy to one of the components of the injections she was taking, started making her own compound and, after years of success, started selling to trans women all over the world. It’s incomprehensible the amount of trans women who have found this option, not just the only way they have to access hormones in many cases, but also the best option after trying other things. It finally felt like my hormone therapy was successful. After a long period of testing, I can say that in these 3 months I found the stability that I have been looking for for the last 3 years. I feel healthy and I find joy in my body.
Finding this joy has required too much work that should have been supported by a trained medical team. Transgender women should not need to rely on each other to find comfort in our bodies after long roads with no end. It feels like being stuck in a labyrinth. Other trans women have saved my life by providing the information that orthodox medicine didn’t have for me, even though it was available. We need to keep fighting together to have a medical system that learns how to treat us properly, with easy access to medications that will provide us with a healthy and successful transition.