“Are you from Tennessee? 'Cause you’re like… really hot.”

I don’t disagree, although I find the sorts of gloves that are designed to keep hands warm far more unpleasant than the ones designed for safety and hygiene.

Gloves. No one wants to hear my opinions on gloves, yet every day I hear questions and complaints to which the answer is “gloves”, and it’s been a while since I publicly shilled for Big Glove, so here we go.

How do I stop cutting myself? Gloves.
How do I stop chipping my nails? Gloves.
Omg Hazel your hands are so soft how do y– Gloves.

Every time I cut or graze myself, chip a nail or drop a glass, I kick myself because this never would have happened if I’d been wearing my gloves.

My everyday glove of choice lately has been these extra thick grippy nitrile ones. Not all nitrile gloves are made equal, and my long nails poke straight through a lot of them the moment I put them on, so I specifically look for the ones with that grip pattern, often referred to as “diamond grip”. Not only do those ones hold up, but I can continue using a single pair around the house for a week.

You can moisturise all you like, but that moisture won’t last long in an ungloved hand. In gloves, you can use the harshest chemicals you like to wash them. Dish soap, bleach, isopropanol, whatever gets the grease off. Your mint condition hands will remain soft, supple and blemish free. You can impress your scaly handed friends with them later!

For something like your go-kart example, I’d be wearing my Invisigrips. These are my go–to for anything involving heavy lifting, or when there’s a risk of tearing or melting the nitrile gloves.

Oh that sounds so wonderful! Reminds me of my days working at a medical research non–profit, which remain the happiest memories of my career. I knew I had it good, but was too young to fully appreciate how different that culture is to working in the commercial sector. The passion and the friendships are so much more genuine, and in my opinion, worth so much more than the money some might choose to look for elsewhere. I hope your organisation remains well–funded forever.

Ahh, okay. I figured it must be a less corporate situation than I’m used to given your reaction. Sounds like a really nice thing you have going there!

You have a relationship with your boss unlike I’ve ever had with any of mine. I would have been mortified by this interaction, though admittedly a little pleased after the fact.

Have you had 6 consecutive months of stable levels in that time? 13 months and I’m still waiting for the day a blood test looks anything like the one that came before it.

Does the misogynistic healthcare bias persist with female doctors, in your experience? My GP/PCP is also a woman in her thirties. I feel so seen when I talk to her, and she’s taking my woes very seriously, referring me for all sorts of tests and working through different drugs to find what works best. Seeing her always gives me a boost of optimism because it feels like I have someone powerful on my side.

I’m going to give more of an answer than you probably wanted, so the TLDR is that there is a correlation with T, but my T was never below the safe female range.

I was going to quote my labs from 2 months ago, but then I remembered I just had new ones done a few days ago.

In December my T was at 0.6 nmol/L (17.31 ng/dL).
In February, my T is at 16.97 nmol/L (489.45 ng/dL).

My estradiol has plummeted from 1200 to 270, with no change in regimen, but it’s not below the ideal range so I won’t consider it relevant here.

The change between these tests is that I was taken off CPA and put on 100mg Progesterone with the assurance that T suppression would be similar, but that I may require an increase to 200mg to stay in female range. I was directed to take it orally, but I’m well aware of the popularity of rectal administration and its benefits. I gave that a try when it became clear that progesterone’s metabolites don’t agree with me. I struggled with this method and returned to oral. My doctor said it should be fine, after all.

Regarding my POTS/CFS/dysautonomia or whatever is the right term for the new hell in which I live, I did notice that my days were getting physically easier in recent weeks. Hardly back to peak physical performance, but better. Mentally, it’s the worst I’ve felt since starting HRT at the beginning of 2025. I had actually been saying for a while that this feels like a testosterone–flavoured depression. Looks like I may have been right.

The moral of the story is that mental health is more important to me than physical health. I’m going back to the less awful regimen, and will trust my endocrinologist slightly less now.

Cis women in menopause are a great group to be around. I still struggle with anxiety about being the inexperienced baby trans woman going through puberty in her thirties, but when I find a woman in peri in her late forties at a party we’re both just like “yo hormones are whack”. It’s good common ground.

The true severity of my fatigue and health problems, with testosterone mostly out of the picture. I was expecting a dip in my stamina, loss of grip strength, a bit more of a struggle moving heavy objects. I wasn’t expecting a POTS diagnosis, and spending whole days in bed if I pushed myself too hard the day before. I’ve experienced orthostatic intolerance and post–exertional malaise since my teens, and for decades dismissed it as “just one of those things”. As it turns out, testosterone was giving me the strength to push through something debilitating, and now I need to take it seriously.

My positive takeaway is the reassurance that transitioning was the right thing to do. Things really suck right now, but I have never once considered detransitioning as a solution.

Oh well let me tell you, as thrilled as I was with what E was doing for my skin, it was starting Cyproterone and getting my T down to the bottom of female range that really smoothed me out. That’s when I started getting compliments from everyone on my complexion, and I didn’t feel like I deserved them.

Having said that, perhaps I should come clean about a few things, because I feel like hormones only tell half the story. At the same time I started HRT, I started Botoxing every 3 months and microneedling every 4 weeks. Pre egg crack, I treated my skin very poorly, so I threw the kitchen sink at undoing that neglect. I’m obsessed with skincare now. AHAs, BHAs, peptides and retinoids are on my mind every night. It’s not the most affordable regimen, and I’m absolutely getting caught in the unhealthy beauty standards marketing trap, but it also seems disingenuous to say that HRT alone transformed my face.

Awwww thank you so much! 💙💙💙 Been a while since an internet comment made me do an uncontrollable happy dance in my bedroom. I definitely don’t pass in public, but I do my best to capture the moments that hair, skincare, lighting and whatever else are working in my favour. Little glimpses of a passing future.

I was initially so worried about my coming out seeming like an attention seeking thing, or like I was expecting anyone other than myself to treat it as a big deal, that I waited for opportunities to slip it in so casually that it’s like I don’t even really care myself.

A couple of examples.

Friend: “Excited for your trip to the US?”
Me: “Mostly, yeah. Just a little apprehensive. It’s a bit less trans friendly over there. You know I’m trans right?”

Friend: “What’s new?”
Me: “Name. Pronouns. That’s about it though.”

I came out to one person by presenting aggressively feminine when we caught up for coffee one day. Ripped off the bandaid, got that obvious topic out of the way, that was it.

One person I knew I wasn’t going to see for a while, but I really wanted to tell her, so I said something like “you might want to update my contact info in your phone, new name, sorry to be a pain”. She was thrilled and asked me for a new photo to go with the new name.

Too nervous because it might make people jealous? Cute girl is cute!

Mmmyeah… My jaw hurts. Night night.

Hahaaaa yeah! This is what it’s all about.

Believe that you are a cool person who people want to hear from. Then let me know how you managed that because I never got the hang of it.

I am also bored, but so very tired, but I don’t want to sleep and nothing is entertaining me. I think I’ve achieved total dopamine bankruptcy. I’m going to chew my way through 14 pieces of strawberry flavoured gum. Maybe that’ll do something.

I found that without T, I’m unable to dissociate the way I used to. Panic attacks were often a sign that I was about to poof out of reality. Not my life; not my problem. Now I’m stuck here in reality, which is certainly for the best, but it created a learning curve during my first few months. Emotions are a maze that I used to teleport out of without trying. Now I have to actually find the way out. It’s a more satisfying way to live, but I’ll admit that it was terrifying at first. I’d spent decades with this defense mechanism, and I hadn’t really developed any others.