HRT History

On this page I’m tracking my HRT doses and blood tests. All of this is provided “as is”, with no implication that someone else should or should not do things the same way. (Except that I explicitly recommend to go for some form of DIY-HRT if you cannot get access to acceptable official HRT.)

Doses

My current medication consists of:

I am at this time happy with that protocol; two blood tests (that predate the daily progesterone and vitamin D) have confirmed at least the amount of estrogen to be reasonable. Minoxidil and Vitamin D are technically not part of my HRT regimen, but I include them here for completeness.

Oestrogel here refers to Besins’ gel containing 0.6 mg Es­tra­di­ol (in the form of Es­tra­di­ol Hemihydrate) per 1 g of gel and dispenses 1.25 g of gel per pump, no matter the specific name they were marketed under. Felicitas’s gel is Homebrew-Estrogen.

I dosed accoring to claimed concentration and claimed dispensed amount. That said, the first Felicitas bottles were clearly not very reliable in producing fully consistent amounts, which usually meant less E than desired, often requiring multiple pumps to get an amount that visually matched the produced E at the start and might explain the low levels of E below. When I started the second bottle, it seemed to produce more which might have increased the dose.

Blood tests

Maasstad’s target range for Estradiol is 300-600 pmol∕l.

(Conversion from Maasstad’s “U∕l” into μg∕l, done by multiplication with $\frac{1000~\mathrm{μg}}{21.2~\mathrm{U}}$ and rounding. It’s really annoying that they don’t use SI-units themselves…)

2024/04/24

This was the first time when I requested a blood test from my then GP, who refused to provide it.

2024/07/10

After talking with my genderclinic (Psytrans), and them trying to talk sense into my then GP, I requested a blood test again and was refused again.

I filed a malpractice complaint afterwards and considered myself to not have a GP since then, until I much later managed to find another one.

2024/08/15

After still not being able to receive a blood test from the healthcare system, I purchased a rather minimalist one privately for > 140 €.

The results here are for a low trough level, in that the blood draw was a bit more than 24 h after my previous dose.

The Estradiol reference levels were as follows:

2024/10/04

Maasstad Ziekenhuis, (unexpected, thus peak value few hours after gel application on the site of the draw). The reference values here are clearly masculine, which makes them pretty useless, but I’m including them for completeness. 🙄

2025/03/05

Maasstad Ziekenhuis, (again unexpected, thus peak value few hours after gel application on the site of the draw).

For completeness sake, the cycle-dependent referene ranges are as follows, though they famously don’t really apply to trans women, and that the intended value for LH and FSH are “below detectable” to begin with (as they should be in my case):

2025/07/11

Maasstad Ziekenhuis (this time deep trough values, since last dose was administered a bit more than 24 hours previously.)

The reference ranges are all as before, so check the table in the previous section for the cycle-dependent reference ranges.

2025/12/19

Maasstad Ziekenhuis (again deep trough).

The reference ranges are all as before, so check the table in the previous section for the cycle-dependent reference ranges.