Taking my life back

[cgasner1]

This thread is gonna be kinda personal for me it’s all about the struggles I’ve been having since around last may around my health. Going into this I finally just reached the point of always being exhausted and something has to be wrong. So I find myself sitting in a doctors office telling him that exact thing im just always tired. I’ve worked 20 hours straight for 10 plus days straight and that’s how I feel every day. For the longest time I just wrote it off as I work a lot I have kids life should be like this. As I’m telling the doctor all about my day and how this just doesn’t make sense anymore that I can’t ever seem to catch up he begins to tell my I must have depression. I’m far from depressed and it results in about a 5 min back and forth between him and I. Finally I get fairly frustrated and just flat tell him I’m not $*)Q!#@$ depressed I’m exhausted. So we agree to pull my blood work and see what going on. During that part of the conversation I ask to have my testosterone levels checked. He doesn’t want to do it and it results in another 5-10 min conversation and I finally kinda loose it an ask him are you paying for my blood work? No so run the tests I want done. A couple days go by and I get a message in the ap

 

[cgasner1]

With these test numbers I call him ready to jump in to the trt. He tells me I need two more blood test to even consider it. Even though I have the test level of a 80 year old male. Per the other part of our conversation he tells me I need to loose I wanna say around 60# at this point I had been trying to diet since Jan prior and couldn’t loose any weight I wonder why? Doc then goes on to tell me I probably have sleep apenea and should eat 1500 calories a day till I loose all the weight. Getting an appointment to see a sleep specialist requires him to write me a script to take a test from a local place which I then had to have about 3 conversations with him to get that done. The sleep test confirms I have the apnea so after taking this test I’m now eligible to sit down and see a sleep specialist in 3 months.

 

[cgasner1]

So with my appointment made for sleep doctor and getting my 3 rounds of blood work I had come to realize this doctor was just not gonna be able to do go me what I needed done. I have a buddy that was coaching me through the entire process and has been such a huge help with this entire thing. The doctor finally agrees to write me a prescription for Trt it’s 100mg every 14 days. This stuff has a 3.6 day half life so with his prescription I’ll be off to the races for about 2 days then crash. My buddy actually told me to not even take it said it will make me feel worse. Once you go on this it’s for life your body stops producing it. He tells me if im
Gonna take what doctor wrote for me at least split the dose in half and take it once a week to help stay level. So I go home take half the dose and actually feel pretty good for a couple days. Then I crash hard. So I figured what the hell I’ll take another half dose and I feel fantastic. Between my own studying and advise of my buddy I decided to call a second doctor. It took about 6 week to get into see her while waiting to see her someone else recommended to me a 3rd doctor that specializes in this type of stuff. Problem is she is 4 months out so I book the appointment anyways.

 

[cgasner1]

Day finally comes and i sit down with doctor 2 she pulls my blood work up and we look at it. At this point im so beyond frustrated with the entire medical system I give her about a 20 min rundown of all the entire story and get her caught up on what happening. I finally tell her that I’m taking double what doctor#1 had prescribed and I don’t feel like I’m the walking dead. We have a talk about even at double how it’s in the very bottom of the amount she could prescribe. I’ve been nothing but honest with the doctors so I flat tell her this goes 1 of 2 ways she either rewrites my prescription for what I’m currently taking or I will just go buy it. The ship has sailed and I’m not going back. I also inform her I’ll be seeing a new doctor that specializes in this in another 6 weeks.

 

[WapitiBob]

I went on low dose TRT last year, 100mg/week. Results aren't really forum appropriate but, if the wife was 20 again it would have been great. Went to 2.5/2x week to calm it down, then eventually just stop taking it. Juice wasn't worth the jab for me but I was barely into the low side.
My DR's keep retiring, seeing a new one in June for my primary that will outlive me but not getting the warm fuzzies about him after seeing him briefly for back spasms.

 

[cgasner1]

Somewhere in the time line I take the second apnea test which takes them 2 weeks to sit down and give me my results. Lady comes back and says you have it and it’s pretty bad. You laid down for 7 hours and honestly it was like you only slept for 2. It seemed crazy to me because the night I took the test I slept like a rock. They set me up with a local place to get my machine and the lady calls to tell me they won’t have a class for like 2-3 weeks and would like to know how I wanna pay for it. Turns out my insurance doesn’t cover any of it since I haven’t met my deductible and it’s 1200 dollars. At this point I ask well why did I have to jump through all these hoops if I have to pay for it. The entire process still pisses me off.

 

[cgasner1]

The apnea machine they gave me some nose plug thing to use and I absolutely hated it I sleep with my mouth open. After trying a head band and all this other stuff I call the doctor and ask for a full face mask. Because a mask is a different prescription for my machine. I’m told people don’t like them an they won’t write it. So once again I call my buddy he says just buy it on Amazon. Imagine that so that’s what I do. After a week with my mask on it’s amazing how great I feel

 

[Nameless Range]

Glad you're finally on a decent track.

One one hand, I understand the medical field's hesitancy with Testosterone. This country is increasingly filled with 20-some year olds abusing it. On the other, for a middle aged male it's kind of a miracle hormone that can really increase your quality of life. The medical standard of requiring one to have less than 300 ng/dL in multiple tests is kind of a joke to me. The difference a 40 year old male will feel with a test level of 305 vs 700 is night and day, and the healthy range for adult men of 300-1000 treats a 20 year old the same as an 80 year old. Goofy, and I don't think many doctors are so up with current knowledge and perspectives.

Though they aren't the same disease, there's such overlap in their presentation, and I wonder how many males are told they have depression when Testosterone could alleviate their symptoms. Lots of studies on this:

"Testosterone treatment appears to be effective and efficacious in reducing depressive symptoms in men, particularly when higher-dosage regimens were applied in carefully selected samples."

"Seven RCTs (n=355 patients) were included in the meta-analysis. Across all trials, testosterone significantly improved depression response compared with placebo (OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.63)."

 

[cgasner1]

I went on low dose TRT last year, 5mg/week. Results aren't really forum appropriate but, if the wife was 20 again it would have been great. Went to 2.5/2x week to calm it down, then eventually just stop taking it. Juice wasn't worth the jab for me but I was barely into the low side.
My DR's keep retiring, seeing a new one in June for my primary that will outlive me but not getting the warm fuzzies about him after seeing him briefly for back spasms.

I haven’t made it to it yet but I’m currently on doctor 3 and she is an absolute rock star. She explained to me a pile of other things that can be tied to low testosterone that we don’t wanna deal with as males. Higher testosterone level she says will also help against prostate cancer

 

[DFS]

I would look into enclomiphene if you are going to do trt.

 

[cgasner1]

Glad you're finally on a decent track.

One one hand, I understand the medical field's hesitancy with Testosterone. This country is increasingly filled with 20-some year olds abusing it. On the other, for a middle aged male it's kind of a miracle hormone that can really increase your quality of life. The medical standard of requiring one to have less than 300 ng/dL in multiple tests is kind of a joke to me. The difference a 40 year old male will feel with a test level of 305 vs 700 is night and day, and the healthy range for adult men of 300-1000 treats a 20 year old the same as an 80 year old. Goofy, and I don't think many doctors are so up with current knowledge and perspectives.

Though they aren't the same disease, there's such overlap in their presentation, and I wonder how many males are told they have depression when Testosterone could alleviate their symptoms. Lots of studies on this:

"Testosterone treatment appears to be effective and efficacious in reducing depressive symptoms in men, particularly when higher-dosage regimens were applied in carefully selected samples."

"Seven RCTs (n=355 patients) were included in the meta-analysis. Across all trials, testosterone significantly improved depression response compared with placebo (OR 0.40, 95% CI 0.26 to 0.63)."

I believe part of the problem I had with doctor one was he thought I was in looking for more of a steroid effect given my size. I was around 257# when I was sitting in his office that day and I carried it pretty well

 

[cgasner1]

So i finally get to go sit down with doctor 3. Same old song and dance I give her a run down on the entire story from the start she is just kinda shaking her head the entire time. We pull up my labs on my phone from my first blood work and she looks at me and says “this is such bullshit you should have never had to deal with all this” Doctor 3 says if I wanna do the work she will get me off the apnea machine. At the time of this I had been on trt for a little over 3 months on twice the first prescription. The advise I got from my buddy was spot on she said it’s the exact same thing she would have prescribed after my first blood draw and we wouldn’t have don’t it 2 more times. So we pull my blood to see what my current levels are at. Couple days later im back in her offfice and we decide to bump my trt up a touch more and to also put me on a thyroid pill. She told me my hormones are so out of whack I’d have been lucky to have lost 10#

 

[cgasner1]

As it sits right now I go back into get blood work on the 9th. Im pretty excited about the entire thing. I love going to the gym again. I have been a much better dad and husband I actually apologized to my wife for the last few years she didn’t deserve that shit. It just creeps up on a guy and I didn’t realize it. Looking forward to showing the doctor that I was always willing to due the work it just wasn’t working. My progress since and levels from test with her 2.5 months ago

 

[cgasner1]

Last week I had to go into the sleep specialist to do a check up on my cpap. She opens my case an is surprised to see the mask and asks about it. My response was pretty simple I’m done being told what I can and can’t do especially when I’m paying for the entire thing. The conversation go real weird when asked why my current prescriptions aren’t in my medical file and I explained to her I no longer see a doctor that’s associated with your hospital for the same reason. So she writes me a new prescription for a face mask and I go to pick it up. The pharmacy is trying to give the the total wrong mask because it’s not what was wrote up. I kinda feel bad about how short I was with that particular lady that day but the frustration of all of this has about put me over the edge.

 

[cgasner1]

That was kind of a pile of ramblings on something that I’ve become very passionate about. If you’re in your 30 and not paying attention to these things you really should be. The ONLY person that’s gonna take care of you is looking you in the mirror. I definitely wouldn’t be afraid to tell a doctor to go #*^@#* themselves at this point. Since I’ve start all this I’ve talked with a few different members on here and figured I should post this just because maybe it will help one person out. I can post updated results in a few weeks if you guys care but honestly this big long wasted story was just hoping maybe one guy will go damn that’s me. I had definitely lost myself looking back on life now I think this has been a problem for a few years life happens I’m excited moving forward considering I feel like I just rolled the clock back 15 years