Neurofunk wrote:
people self-medicate as a last resort type scenario, especially with the way healthcare tends to deal with stuff like HRT (at least in Europe, anyway).
i would always recommend consulting an endocrinologist before starting to take anything you've decided upon yourself.
Exactly. A proper endo will assist you in finding what is right for you, and will tell you the fuck to stop if your blood tests show anything remotely dangerous.
A bad endo will just try to threaten you into submission and basically tell you that your own life is not yours to decide.
Monitoring is needed, and most endos that have worked with trans people before are well aware of this and will not let you do anything that will negatively impact your health. They'll help you find a way, which is why it is so important to talk to one.
Plus you are meant to have checkups once every one to three months when you start any form of regimen in the first place, to closely monitor hormone, liver and kidney values - after you have had multiple tests on the same dosage, for a considerable amount of time, without changes in regimen, that is when tests get more infrequent, but regular checkups are still required.
Also your general doctor can usually take or commission the blood tests, too, it's just you'll need to consult an endo to tell you what exactly they mean, which takes much less time than a full appointment usually. Js.