Hormone Change Question

[Freewriterr]

Hi All,

I have not been in for a while because of how life gets. Holidays, Moved, started a business, and then our new place flooded and the list goes on. But a month or so ago I had a testostrone level check done, then about a week or so ago, went back to doc for something and they told me that the test results showed that my level was sky high. Now I am totally in shock by this.... and I want to know if anyone has ever heard of this happening, let me explain alittle.

I went to the doc the other day and they had gotten in my results for a testostrone level check. They run one every now and then to see what my levels are. I am IS and assigned female at birth, changed it all to male as a young adult.

Born with a ovary and a testicle, though testicle was not found until I was in mid teens if I recall right, my foster mom tells me we knew when i was a teenager...my parents put me in institutions and then the streets, were a cool social worker that knew me got me into a foster home that is my family to this day...anyway, parents that had adopted me hated me, and abused me for being different and fought everything about my puberty and developement to the fulliest even when specialist try to bring it to a stop.... well here is the thing.

My testicle has never produced sperm, and has always fallen short on the level of testostrone for my life time. THe ovary was removed many years ago due to a medical situation or I would have been dead within a few hrs according to what I found out later.... I believe that too, because before they took me into emergancy surgery I was having a lot of trouble staying conscious and I was having trouble with being able to literally see, like going blind, I still dont know why that happened. Anyway, so no ovary, just the testicle, and it was looked at about two years ago and was told that it was very different, but that it was healthy in the sense no tumors or anything like that. This doc was a doc from Standford that has a long history working with IS babies and what not, so he was really good and I trust him.

Now I have had to take 1.5 cc's per 200 mls for many many years, and I was told that in doing so the testostrone that my body makes would be depleted and eventually the body just stops making it....well go figure there is NOTHING about me that is the same...because they told me my testostrone level is extremely high, and that we have to cut back the injection amt. I was floored! I asked my doc if my body is making more or soemthing and he said yes! How can that be????? I am NOT complaining I am just in shock! And my penis has grown a good inch or so in the past couple of monthes and my wife will back that up...we are both stunned, but not sure what is going on.

I am all for a larger penis, dont get me wrong, heck my wife thinks it is great too, but this is really wierd. I have also noticed a real difference in when I cum too. (not meaning to be so graphic and I do not want to offend anyone) But it is like that one inch has repositioned the nerve that runs through my shaft area and it is just not were it was, if that makes any sense. I am sooo confused by what is going on, glad but confused, and I told my wife that i realy need to write and hope that someone else has heard of this happening.

My mom (foster) says that nothing has ever been normal with my body so this should be no real suprise. But I have to admit it really is!!! How can my body just start making more testostrone out of the blue like this, and how can my penis start to grow out of the blue like this???

I dont think anyone else really understands the effect this is having on me emotionally inside, because they think I should just be glad, well I am glad, but I am also "scared"? is that the right word? I dont even know, just very worried, but then not really worried, but confused, heck I don't know what I am feeling but I know I feel very isolated with these changes, because how can others out side of being IS even get what this does to us. Just when you think you understand what has happened to your body, or to whatever ....something has to go and throw me off all over again. I also just feel like if I am the only one...well here comes that again too! I dont like feeling like the odd guy out, but that is what I am feeling right now...and then my wife thinks it is all such a gift from God to be IS, which I tend to agree with, but does not mean it does not scare me when something happens that I feel so confused with.

So anyway, does anyone have a clue to what in the world is happening here with me????? Has anyone heard of it at all?? I sure hope so! But if not , well dang it, ok, for now I will just have to be the only person I know...but maybe at some point that will change and someone will come here that has had it happen. Neve know lol

Well thanks for being here so I can come and ask this wierd question.

Peace,
Freewriterr

[Jules]

Yes, I have heard of that, and it happens to other peoples well as the intersexed. There are other places in the body and brain that produce testostrone other then the testes. Many men and woman as they get older will produce more estrogens and testostrone. Sometimes even changing your enviroment, like new jobs, new friends, and a improved attiude can change your hormone level for the better. When people are depressed there hormone levels can go down and stay down. When the depression lifts hormones levels can shoot back up. Also they are learning more and more about how our hormones are working in our body. Educated Doctors know more about endocrinology now then they did five years ago. Having better sex can drive hormone levels up. What makes better sex? Better diet, less stress, and some people sexualy peak as they get older anyway. It sounds like you have a streak teste and they do produce testostrone. It sounds like you have had a lot of scares in your life. I would not be to worried about it. I'm not a Doctor, but even a Doctor might have trouble answering your questions unless a ton of test were done. Follow your doctors advice. And injoy your new and improved sex life!! I don't have any testes anymore and I'm on female hormones but I still have a high testorone level, even though I don't have grow a beard or have any boyish traits about my body. I do have a monsterous sex drive and that may be related to my testorone level.
While I don't have all the answers (wish I did) Your penis growing larger is not that strange. Remember, human bodys change as they get older intersexed or not. I have every reason to believe that some of the changes as we age can be for the better!:D I was very upset untill I was 29 .I couldln't get over 105 pounds ever. Then suddenly I'm 140 and I looked 100% better with a fuller frame, My aging changed me for the better, and I'm very happy!!!
I hope things keep changing for the better:)

[Freewriterr]

Jules,
Thanks for responding. The wierd thing is that I have been under MORE stress the past few monthes than I have been in years!! I hate the east coast weather, am home sick in a major way, starting a new business is stress all on it's own, financial stress, our Apartment we just had moved into was completely wiped out from flooding due to a broken sump pump, now a legal battle, and I could go on and on. Sex drive??? What is that? I have none really. My wife has a high one, and i have a low one, but I know it is related probably mostly to my low thyroid situation. I take med for it but it does nothing that I can see over the past 5 mos.

I am not a depresed person, but I am willing to admit that I am not happy with where life has things right now. Believe me I know it could be a lot worse, been there and done that, but I just want to get some things in order to take stress off of myself nad my wife, and enjoy life. I made myself a promise as a kid, and that is that i would never allow myself to be unhappy like I was as a kid growing up. And I am not unhappy compared to that. Just stressed to the max.

So there is no way that the hormones are boosted due to a lack of stress and overwhelming happiness, lol.. that just aint the case! =) But what I can say is that I find comfort in knowing that hormones can change in life from various things...so at least the change of levels is not something unknown or whatever, that makes me feel better.

What is a streak testes? Is there another name for it, so I can look at my records and see what it is called in there? I always sneak and read my records if they are on the door when I am waiting for the doc lol...does anyone else do that too? Just curious.

Well thanks Jules! I am going to now go cook on my grill on the patio...I think the wife has finally turned off the vac, I hide when she is doing that!

Peace,
Freewriterr

[Jules]

Streak is when you have a testical(s) that lack or sexs cells or sperm so you can't reproduce. My spelling is so bad, wish I had a spell checker. Your thyirod effects your hormones too. Yes I did seak a peek at my records years back. That is how I found out I was intersexed. Not by reading all my records with a medical diconary ( I did that later) but by seeing pictures in a envolope. Talking about being shocked. it was like in the cartoon when a anval falls on your head from the sky! thats when I knew that my whole life was a big secret kept from me, and the cat was of the bag. Now there is so much I have learned in the past two years about intersexed states and how they are treated that I feel like a big sponge trying to soak up a ocean. It is very hard to keep up my studys for school and to read daily on the issues of intersexed trying to be objective and hoping that the imformation I gather is based on fact . this has changed my life.
I had a boyfreind who had a thyriod problem. His sex drive was affected too but he did have one just a small one. I think it was funny when you talked about overwemling happyness! I'm happy and stay busy but I can't remember overwellming happyness in my life unless it was very short lived:D but I think I'm well normlized as far as a intersexed girl can get. I feel that the better educated I am the better off I will be:)

[Freewriterr]

Jules,

I have no idea what overwhelming happiness is to any long lasting state, probably a denial of reality! LOL But what I do try and do is to be grateful that the past is truly over. My childhood plain and simple was a nightmare. And I don't think I will ever really forget that hell. I was forced to be a girl and knew I was being forced, because there was nothing that felt right about it.

My parents would hold me down and force me into dresses at the age of 5 and what not. I would throw up in the bathroom and beg and cry to not have it done to me, but they just did not get it. And then as I hit puberty and my male characteristics started showing in the way my body was developing my mom would hold me in front of the mirror and scream at me, holding my shirt up and what not. Telling me I was glad and that I was actually a freak etc. I have NO idea why that woman ever adopted me and my brother but she did. My father never stood in, he would constantly try and get me to "act like a girl" and at the age of 13 I looked at him one day and I clearly remember it, standing out in the garage at his workbench, and I told him, " The act is over I will not play this sick game anymore, I am not going to have this done to me anymore" and from that day forward I stopped even trying to put on the "show" of being something or someone I was not.

I am not sure that it helped me, because it made life really hard. I was put in a Mental Institution for a year at the state, then again in a private one after that. In the institutions they tried to talk to my parents, and tried to get them to do something.... they had me stay on the boys units by day, and then in my own room by night on the girls unit at the state, we were co ed at the private place so it did not matter. At the state they were worried about me getting raped, so they had to do that. The evening staff workers were not educated in a single thing, other than maybe babysitting. But they were terribly abusive! They told me I was going to burn in hell because I was a freak of nature. They would hold me down infront of my girlfriend and others and put makeup on me, and I would become violent on them, and then they of course would lock me up in isolation. Please dont ask me why I did not report this.... reporting was like asking for more.

They knew everyones breaking point and what was done to us individually varied, but we were all abused by them. I live with some of those memories. Some of my friends from there killed themselves over the years, actually most did. Some are still caught in a system somewhere from what little i have been able to find out, but we were all just kids in our own hell, and in that world you don't judge each other for your differences, you protect each other from a cruel world that is more screwed up than we kids were. I went back there one time, and the Unit is empty, and building closed down. But I walked around the grounds for a little bit, and just took it in. I took in that I survived all that was dished out to me. And there is a large part of peace from within that comes with that.

I carried the anger for the first few years of being an adult, but I let go of it,, because I was allowing myself to be a victim still of all that had landed on me. I refuse to live unhappy or in hell today. I am not a kid that can have that stuff forced on me, I am an adult that can now decide were my boundaries are, who I will allow to effect me and who I won't.

My father is a part of my life to a small degree today, but my father has apologized and realized that he was also robbed of a son, though he thought he only had two, he knows inside of himself he had three. He told me that he was glad that finally someone had stepped in and straitened things out, because he knew that it had to be the right thing to do, sense nothing else had ever worked, they just did not get it, well he did not.
That is a lot coming from a Conservative retired Military Officer and retired Politician that is from the Deep South.

My Mom however I do not allow in my life. She is too destructive to it. I cannot try and force her to be anymore than what she is, and what she is I cannot have in my life. She is mean and cruel, and has issues that go far beyond being something that will ever recieve help or anything. I do not subject myself to her these days. She is cold and calculating, and mostly lonely and hurting in her own world of isolation. I used to try and have a relationship with her, but the situations were way too much, too abusive to me and what not, and I freed myself of that.

So while life throws me some real hard things, I tell myself, I refuse to focus on it as being impossible, I already faced impossible odds, now I am the one with the power over what kind of life I choose to have, and I look for the solutions. But I am human and I do go through stress and I do face some really tense times with challenges. Lately been challenged a lot. And I do get a little worried with things because when something reminds me of the childhood confusions the docs that dont want to do a thing other than cover up things they dont get, I get a little nervous.

Well I am going to stop here this is getting long. I cooked on the grill this afternoon and more nice weather coming tomorrow thank god!

Take care and again thanks for writing.

Peace,
Free

[Jules]

Boston has a big medical library and I spent a few days in there looking up historys of the intersexed before 1940. Your story sounds like many I have read about. The isolation, the shame and the total lack of understanding that we are people with our own identity. I really don't remember to much about this but my medical records claim that as a very young child I would take off dresses that my mom would try and force on me. My mom exspressed anger and fustration to my doctors that I acted like a total boy. I know that my femmine traits evovled as I got older and It had to do alot with the wasy PEOPLE made me FEEL. As a child I think that I was very much on the masculine side of personaity. I even remember having make beleive friends and I would make beleive that I was a boy. Even when I got to the age of about 12 or 13 I really couldn't fathom how to act femmine or how to make my mother understand that I didn't really care about what girls liked or what girls did. I was happeir alone without friends. Of course this had a lot to do with the fact the I didn't fit in at school in any social group. ( I have lots of male and female friends now) Even though I had no idea that my gentials had been operated on or that I was half boy, I just knew in my heart and in my soul that I was not like other girls in the way I acted or thought. Of course a lot changed when i got my first boyfriend. I had such a pretty face and body (Plus size D boobs) that men were just dazzled by me and didn't care if I was a tomboy. The men who romanced me brought me futher down the femmie scale them any one else. I felt femm around them. A man can bring that side out in me if he realy loves and romances me. Of course I know that woman are my true sexual orentaion. But when I love a man I forget all about my sexual disire for woman. Now at 34 I feel that I have changed from a tomboy to a girl who has both male and female energry. I can be very femmine but only around the right man, does that make sence to you???? If my mom were alive today she would not believe that the womanly traits that she tried so hard to force on me came in time when I had no pressure to be anybody but myself. A question for you if you don't mind me asking. How in the world did you mom and dad think you were a girl if you had a penis??? Its not that I'm suprized that you were treated badly, heck I was just as abused but in diffrent ways. The penis is such a male indentifying organ that even if you were 99.9% girl to have a penis changes everything.
I'm so glad to hear that you don't have bitterness about the past.
sounds like you live a sort-of nomralized life, like i do. I'm not mad about what happen to me. I'm a strong minded, alert, and very open mined person because of what I have been through. I'm like 34 going on 54 with a Harvard education. LOL!!! The biggest mistake people make about me is to doubt my inteligence. I have been through so much adverity that I'm as sharp as a tack when it comes to being aware of my surroundings and how people respond to me. It is the gift of being intersexed. I can see the world from both a male and and a female prespective. Apart from being a strong surviver of a tough life do you yourself see any advanige to being intersexed???:D

[Freewriterr]

Hey Jules,

I started to respond and am falling asleep. Been up all night working around the clock and am going to head for bed and will write you when I get a chance in the next day or so.

But to answer one question right way. Yes I do believe that i have many gifts that being who I am has gifted me with! There are blessings in all things that happen if we take the time to look for them. SOunds to me that you have found a lot of what I found. and the things you wrote here i could directly relate to. I will write you more soon.

Peace
Free