In late December, I had my blood work done for the HRT levels. When the results came back, the estradiol level was well below optimal for trans feminization.
I contacted my HRT doctor, and he agreed that the initial prescription hadn’t produced the desired results. He wrote a new prescription for a stronger dosage, and sent it electronically to my local pharmacy. You may not remember, but I had significant difficulty getting the patches from the mail order pharmacy, and my insurance is treating the patches as tier 3, meaning very little coverage.
As a result, I chose to self-pay, and pickup the patches at the CVS within walking distance. With the use of GoodRx, I am paying $25.05, plus $9.99 per month for a Gold subscription, per 4 week carton. Using the insurance, it had worked out to $60.85 per carton on a 3 carton supply.
Sounds all good,right? Well, that new prescription was sent to the pharmacy on 27-December. I picked it up today. They were having trouble getting it in, apparently. I called on Tuesday, and complained. I was running low on the first three month (12 week) supply of the lower dose, so I was understandably annoyed. Surprise!
It was in stock all along. They found it, and readied it for me to pickup. I went this afternoon, and am now in possession of the new dosage. For those in the know about such things, I’m moving from 0.05 mg/day to 0.1 mg/day. I intend to change to the new patch dosage this evening, rather than wait until the current patch expires on Tuesday. I’ll have new levels drawn in about six weeks or so, and see how the new dosage does.
In addition to the convenience of transdermal administration, the transdermal route (along with the injectable option) eliminates the increased stroke risk of taking estradiol via the oral route1. As always, the research is on post-menopausal cis women, but our vascular systems don’t vary enough to suspect it wouldn’t apply. Given my recent AFib diagnosis, eliminating that additional risk is a very good thing.
Happy New Year! Let this be the year I get the AFib under control. So mote it be.
- The current thinking seems to be that the cardiac risks of estrogen are a result of it being metabolized in the liver. The transdermal patches eliminate that metabolism. Reference 2021: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8063246/ ↩︎
An Aging Trans Woman 
Leave a comment