I've had my 2nd HRT injection now. I get them on Mondays at the Doctor's office for now. Insurance issues - can't do home injections without lots of letter writing and proving medical necessity of the treatment - yet they pay for MD visits and injections without question. Weird insurance.

It's a 1ml injection and it hurts like hell. They used a 21g needle the first time, the second time they used a 25 and it took like 5 minutes to get the meds into my butt.

They said the bigger diameter was better because it was over with quicker.

I was wondering about asking for a 22 or 23g next time...anybody used one of those - is it a better compromise between initial pain and time spent with a needle in your butt?

Next question:
What would something like this do - once acclimated to the treatment, doing it at home, and only having to have followup blood work done yearly start doing short 10 week cycles of this:
Test 500mg/week, deca 250mg/week
Then using my regular HRT dosage between cycles

Too much? Risky? Good idea?

Most insurances now want blood work done every 6 months...

You can cycle and do TRT... just finish the cycle in plenty of time for everything to be out of your system and give yourself enough time for cholesterol to go back to normal... 2 months would be good... then you can cycle again

Cool, thanks for the info Visions - I was hoping to hear from you on this.

Doc said once everything was sorted out and the dosage was correct and finalized - we would just have to do blood work every year - however, we are having to play the insurance company's game for now.

They finally paid for the 150.00 each test levels. However the GHP with the liver profile, thyroid level, and all that other stuff that goes along with it - that's out of pocket. Well, it's all out of pocket until my deductable is met, but they are at least applying some of the blood work to the deductable.

Most complaints about shots are about what happens AFTER the shot, not during.

Any needle is gonna hurt a little when it goes in, but once it goes in, assuming you don't hit a nerve, the discomfort is pretty much over. A smaller pin may hurt a little bit less upon entry and may also create less scar tissue, a consideration for anyone who plans on doing a career of aas cycles, but it will take longer to push the oil through the pin.

That is not bad.

Some of the post-shot pain some people feel is from the oil sitting bunched up in one place as opposed to dispersing nicely. The slower the injection, the greater chance of oil dispersal, and the pin sitting in you for 30-60 seconds should not add to the pain if whoever is giving the shot has a reasonably steady hand. There is no downside to a slow 25g shot vs. a fast 21g shot for YOU, EXCEPT the doc or his assistant may get impatient and prefer plunging for 5 seconds with a 21g over 30-60 seconds with a 25g. That is where you will have to try to impose your will upon the doctor, who works for you, not the other way around.

There are other ways of dispersing that oil that the doctor won't like either cause they're time consuming and make it harder for him to move you from waiting room A to room B to room C and out the door, but all that will depend on the subtle contest of wills between your doctor (the hired help), and you (the employer). I'm talking about things like pre-heating the oil, massaging post-shot, maybe more heat post-shot, all that stuff is discussed elsewhere here and on all similar boards, but it may be like a foreign language to most doctors and their staffs.

I'm actually lucky, my doc is most agreeable. That's how I got injectable instead of jumping through the hoops and doing the gel first. My level was low enough to be considered non-existant.

She said the gel really doesn't work well, however she did warn me that the oil based injections would be more uncomforatable for a few days. The discomfort isn't that bad - it's only 1cc. It's only sore for 2-3 days. She said I'll get used to it pretty soon though.

I'm accustomed to injections anyway, I do a sq self injection at home for MS treatment every day anyway. Then there are the monthly IM injections for it, and when there is an attack - daily IM injections for a week. When I was getting solu-medrol instead of decadron I was doing home IV therapy for 3 days at a time...but I'd cheat and put in an INT and tape it down really good so I only had to stick once. She got pissed that I was starting my own IV instead of having a nurse come by to do it. Hell, I've finished RN school, my wife is a nurse, and we are both experienced paramedics - starting an IV isn't really a big deal.

Monday, I'll get them to preheat and I can massage it myself. The nurse is kind of hot - after the stuff takes effect, it may be embarrassing what might happen if she's massaging my butt.

It better start happening anyway - I'm paying more for this shit to do it legal than I could just pay to buy gear with. And will have to continue to do so for a while.

Well, I was wondering this before a little, but with this added info about you and your wife being medically trained,

why are you using a middleman (your doctor) at all?

Why not just run your own HRT using things you obtain elsewhere, as in, on the Net?

Drug tested at work. Because I lost so much fat and gained a bit of muscle those assholes accuse me of juicing. Hell, you can look at my pics and see that I haven't. Now, it's time to actually get some results - and it can't happen with the test level of an 8 year old girl.

Plus if I can get a heads up before a test I'll show up with my head slick and a brazillian just to mess with them - it's a hair test.

Because of my medical history, I felt that getting the blood work and doing it right along with solving some ongoing problems with medical guidance was the best way to go. My doc is cool with my decision and will help me out as far as she legally can go. She has prescribed var for me in the past to help with strength loss in my legs...didn't help though because we didn't use enough. I didn't know how much was needed for strength gains and neither did she. She just knew that it is even used in children, does make strength, is the safest of the orals, and that was when I first got the idea of HRT - she asked me if I was interested in bypassing the liver back then - I just heard the word "injectable", thought of the evils of steroids and told her I'd pass. Since then, I've gotten educated and so has she.

In the future, I'll be skipping the middleman, but must keep the medical record going for the drug tests.

Sounds like a smart strategy.

Your doc sounds way cooler than average too. In a more perfect world the doc would be not only willing, but also very knowledgeable. But that is a very rare breed to find. The willing part is the more important of the two, she can learn as she goes. She might even view YOU as some on-the-job-training for herself.

Sounds like you're in a good place, Vagrant.

We all want the name and phone number of your doctor.

She is way right, getting you to skip the gels and patches...they don't work for shit...been there done that, bought the t shirt and work the f###ing thing out.

RE people at work talking....Vagrant, don't pay any attention...the world is full of jealous bitches...you are on the right track for you...don't let anything stand in your way.

Nitrateman

Yeah, my doc is the best. However she can't just prescribe stuff for bodybuilding purposes - that would be illegal and unethical. She can though, help me by treating weakness from my MS and with my endocrinological issues. Personally, I'd rather be "normal" to start with and not have to work against these things. But, if it wasn't for these things, I wouldn't be into the strength, training, nutrition based lifestyle I'm in now. If it works that I'm able to feel normal, stay out of the wheelchair, keep my career I've spent 16 years building then it's all good. If I happen to look a little better at the end of all that - even better, but obviously not her goal.

She is willing to try unconventional things and take them as far as she legally can. In fact my ill fated attempt at powerlifting was sort of her idea. She told me I needed to learn to train for neural adaptation instead of just to build muscle. Since MS is a nerve disease not a muscle disease - the muscles themselves don't get weak - they are weakened by not getting enough nerve impulses to function. So training PL style with heavier weights and lower volume to get more nerves firing at the same time instead of just going for hypertrophy is part of my therapy. It didn't work out too well, she did warn me that injury risk was higher if I didn't learn all I could before starting, and I made a few mistakes during the learning process. Obviously she can't teach me all I need to know being just a physician and not a BB or PL.

The HST I'm doing now was also her idea - light high volume recovery workouts working my way back up to heavy low volume stuff over a couple of months. So far so good.

So the HRT is actually for a real endocrine issue, she won't be prescribing deca or D-bol, Var was as far as she was willing to go with orals - and it didn't work for the issue we used it for. Just test, enough to do the job, no more. Anything extra she'll help me with sides but not risk her license to prescribe them - that would simply be too much to ask and I wouldn't even think of it.

I could get your her phone number though - she is cute and single...I don't think she likes guys so it wouldn't do any good there either.