mikeg313
Well-known member
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Welp, I haven’t been on here since 2013 (member since 2011) and I’m excited to be back in the swing of things and taking my life back in a lot of ways. I just started TRT last October 29th and I’d like to share some of my story as well as my current protocol as well as ask questions and welcome input from the community.
Since 2013 I’ve had a pretty rough go at things. It started off as I had a minor heart attack mid cycle do to the level of stress and amount I was pushing myself at work , at home and in the gym all while a 500mg wk test e cycle that I was not monitoring my blood for and ended up having what the docs referred to a stress related heart attack as a result of polycythemia. I was told my blood was thick as molasses. Luckily no tissue damage was done and no stints put in and I survived learning a very hard lesson. I made a serious mistake and it almost cost me my life. Although I was monitoring BP and taking support supps i believe the lack of blood drawing is what got me, but all of that is in hindsight. Shortly after my heart attack in that February I was out with some brothers riding and hit a large piece of concrete sidewalk in an unlit inner section in Detroit, did a drive roll at 50mph over the handlebars with no helmet at broke my right radius in half protecting my head but still also fracturing my skull and a complete multiple fractured left occipital and broken nose. I sprung up on my feet immediately lucky to be alive but ended up having multiple surgeries on my right arm (3 surgeries in 4 years) and (1) head as a result. I tried to get back into lifting after 6 months of the first plate in my arm and ended up getting a stress fracture in a screw hole and snapping it in half after dead lifting one day. Second plate and 7 more new screws in my arm as a result. My body was rejecting the surgical steal causing inflammation and tons of pain for 3 years until they decided to take it out. During that surgery something happened during placement I suspect and I woke up screaming and yelling because my shoulder felt as if my arm had been ripped off. Turns out they tore my rotator cuff %90 so 6 month later they fixed that and it was a brutal and long recovery and still have pain till this day. By this time 6 or so years had passed, working out was painful and I started having massive depression issues , panic attacks, chronic pain and a mess of other things. I tried getting back into shape many times and only met with more pain. I had also been hit by two SUVs resulting in 3 left shoulder surgeries and 2 years of PT before all this and another incident where I was side swiped on my bike by a dually going 60mph as I was merging into traffic from a side street but luckily didn’t break anything even though my body took his rear fender flare off. Anyway, about a year and a half ago I started having spinal issues from the previous wrecks and woke up one morning after a few months of increasing neck pain and my C5/6 vertebrae herniated massively in my sleep. Emergency surgery had to be done because my spinal cord was pinched and my left arm was going completely numb and immobile and the pain was blinding. So they did C5/6 spinal fusion. During the recovery, which was awful I did a lot of laying around on pain meds, sleeping , eating like **** as well as drinking after work bartending nearly every night as the pain after a shift was unbearable. I start having increasing lower back pain which I recently found out is my L7/T1 (iirc) disc bulging and cracked like a jelly donut with a crack in the side they explained. This is also causing severe sciatica flare up along with constant numbness and nerve pain in my lower back and left leg. Last summer I was in the lowest and darkest place I could be. At that point I had 10 surgeries in 11 years , 2 closed head injuries resulting in what was diagnosed as bi polar disorder and ptsd , minor heart attack and my drinking was getting out of control. I ended up trying to quit drinking last August as I was 245lbs , fat as hell, physically weak, weak minded and broken, in chronic pain and medicated for all this crap. The stress of the pandemic and loss of two jobs due to it wasn’t helping much either. Early September I had been sober almost a month and ended up having a really bad blowout with my wife while having a severe pain flare up. I got drunk, real drunk , my wife had left with my son and I ended up messaging my best friend out in Cali and saying goodbye and swallowed a handful of my muscle relaxers I take for spinal injections (zanaflex). I woke up to another buddy that lives close by shaking me after my friend from Cali called him to get over to my house. He broke in and dragged me to the ER and my heart was barely pumping. I ended up spending a week institutionalized and when I got out a month at home alone because my wife wanted me to have the time and space I needed to figure **** out with myself and doctors. Of course all my doc appointments ended up disappointing as usual and they wanted to just dump more meds in me which had not helped for nearly a decade and I could not keep going down the same path. I immediately started researching other methods to help me mentally and physically and ended up deciding to get my blood work done. My testosterone was down to 229. It had been tested at 329 4 years ago but of course my primary wouldn’t refer me to anyone nor indulge in any conversation about possible hormone therapy to help with the depression or physical ailments. I ended up contacting a hormone clinic and having a video call with one of their docs, a urologist, and he prescribed me my trt based on everything that was going on and my numbers. At this point I had exhausted everything except this. Now I’m 3 months in and everything in my life has done 3 360’s and a 180 it seems. I’m still getting things dialed in and fine tuned but it’s been a constant progression of positive results with every change or upgrade in protocol. My depression is nearly gone and my lows are very manageable. I’ve been able to cut my SSRI dosage in half. I don’t have constant feelings of doom, fear, anxiety, anger or extreme emotional ups and downs. My pain tolerance has gone back up and my motivation and feelings of hope and fight for my and my family’s future is back. My IBS is gone. My fatigue is still hear but only about half as bad as I’m able to work out doing low impact cardio and physical therapy exercises 2-3 a day 5-6 days a week. My enjoyment in my hobbies and creativity is coming back. My sex life is back to feeling like my 20’s and the return of my erections of my youth is amazing . My joint pain is still pretty bad and I’m unable to lift many weights but my trt doc just added deca which I received today to help with it as he wanted to see how I responded to my base trt protocol before adding anything else. Just about every aspect of my life has changed for the positive in the last 3 months and my marriage is back on cloud 9 and I’m active with my son like I haven’t been in a long time. I know this is a lot to read but it feels good to share with strangers as I don’t have a lot of open minded friends in regards to this kind of treatment and even know they have seen me going through it for years I just get written off as crazy. Anyway I’ll share my protocol now along with a couple questions I have with my new additions. Thank you.
4- 20ml subq inj. of 200mg test cyp (160mg a week total)
25 units of hcg twice a week subq
.25 mg anastrozole twice a week (I started getting rosey nipples and areolas were looking weird around week 8)
My bloods at the moment are
Total test 626 ng/dL
Free 13 ng/dl
Estradiol 19 pg/ml
SHBG 32.2 nmol/L
Albumin 4.2 g/dl
Just added and received from pharmacy today .5 ML of 200mg nandrolone twice a week prescribed.
My question is in regards to the deca.
Does 200mg a week seem high?
Does it require a loading phase and need to be that high?
I also would like to know if Subq will be as beneficial or more as IM. My prescription says IM twice a week but I’ve read mixed responses of both methods and would like to hear some more current knowledgeable experiences. I prefer the ease and lack of pain of Subq with my cyp as I’m sticking myself so many times a week but I also want to get the most out of my treatment.
Again. That’s a whole lot of crazy **** to digest and I apologize if my writing isn’t the best.
Since 2013 I’ve had a pretty rough go at things. It started off as I had a minor heart attack mid cycle do to the level of stress and amount I was pushing myself at work , at home and in the gym all while a 500mg wk test e cycle that I was not monitoring my blood for and ended up having what the docs referred to a stress related heart attack as a result of polycythemia. I was told my blood was thick as molasses. Luckily no tissue damage was done and no stints put in and I survived learning a very hard lesson. I made a serious mistake and it almost cost me my life. Although I was monitoring BP and taking support supps i believe the lack of blood drawing is what got me, but all of that is in hindsight. Shortly after my heart attack in that February I was out with some brothers riding and hit a large piece of concrete sidewalk in an unlit inner section in Detroit, did a drive roll at 50mph over the handlebars with no helmet at broke my right radius in half protecting my head but still also fracturing my skull and a complete multiple fractured left occipital and broken nose. I sprung up on my feet immediately lucky to be alive but ended up having multiple surgeries on my right arm (3 surgeries in 4 years) and (1) head as a result. I tried to get back into lifting after 6 months of the first plate in my arm and ended up getting a stress fracture in a screw hole and snapping it in half after dead lifting one day. Second plate and 7 more new screws in my arm as a result. My body was rejecting the surgical steal causing inflammation and tons of pain for 3 years until they decided to take it out. During that surgery something happened during placement I suspect and I woke up screaming and yelling because my shoulder felt as if my arm had been ripped off. Turns out they tore my rotator cuff %90 so 6 month later they fixed that and it was a brutal and long recovery and still have pain till this day. By this time 6 or so years had passed, working out was painful and I started having massive depression issues , panic attacks, chronic pain and a mess of other things. I tried getting back into shape many times and only met with more pain. I had also been hit by two SUVs resulting in 3 left shoulder surgeries and 2 years of PT before all this and another incident where I was side swiped on my bike by a dually going 60mph as I was merging into traffic from a side street but luckily didn’t break anything even though my body took his rear fender flare off. Anyway, about a year and a half ago I started having spinal issues from the previous wrecks and woke up one morning after a few months of increasing neck pain and my C5/6 vertebrae herniated massively in my sleep. Emergency surgery had to be done because my spinal cord was pinched and my left arm was going completely numb and immobile and the pain was blinding. So they did C5/6 spinal fusion. During the recovery, which was awful I did a lot of laying around on pain meds, sleeping , eating like **** as well as drinking after work bartending nearly every night as the pain after a shift was unbearable. I start having increasing lower back pain which I recently found out is my L7/T1 (iirc) disc bulging and cracked like a jelly donut with a crack in the side they explained. This is also causing severe sciatica flare up along with constant numbness and nerve pain in my lower back and left leg. Last summer I was in the lowest and darkest place I could be. At that point I had 10 surgeries in 11 years , 2 closed head injuries resulting in what was diagnosed as bi polar disorder and ptsd , minor heart attack and my drinking was getting out of control. I ended up trying to quit drinking last August as I was 245lbs , fat as hell, physically weak, weak minded and broken, in chronic pain and medicated for all this crap. The stress of the pandemic and loss of two jobs due to it wasn’t helping much either. Early September I had been sober almost a month and ended up having a really bad blowout with my wife while having a severe pain flare up. I got drunk, real drunk , my wife had left with my son and I ended up messaging my best friend out in Cali and saying goodbye and swallowed a handful of my muscle relaxers I take for spinal injections (zanaflex). I woke up to another buddy that lives close by shaking me after my friend from Cali called him to get over to my house. He broke in and dragged me to the ER and my heart was barely pumping. I ended up spending a week institutionalized and when I got out a month at home alone because my wife wanted me to have the time and space I needed to figure **** out with myself and doctors. Of course all my doc appointments ended up disappointing as usual and they wanted to just dump more meds in me which had not helped for nearly a decade and I could not keep going down the same path. I immediately started researching other methods to help me mentally and physically and ended up deciding to get my blood work done. My testosterone was down to 229. It had been tested at 329 4 years ago but of course my primary wouldn’t refer me to anyone nor indulge in any conversation about possible hormone therapy to help with the depression or physical ailments. I ended up contacting a hormone clinic and having a video call with one of their docs, a urologist, and he prescribed me my trt based on everything that was going on and my numbers. At this point I had exhausted everything except this. Now I’m 3 months in and everything in my life has done 3 360’s and a 180 it seems. I’m still getting things dialed in and fine tuned but it’s been a constant progression of positive results with every change or upgrade in protocol. My depression is nearly gone and my lows are very manageable. I’ve been able to cut my SSRI dosage in half. I don’t have constant feelings of doom, fear, anxiety, anger or extreme emotional ups and downs. My pain tolerance has gone back up and my motivation and feelings of hope and fight for my and my family’s future is back. My IBS is gone. My fatigue is still hear but only about half as bad as I’m able to work out doing low impact cardio and physical therapy exercises 2-3 a day 5-6 days a week. My enjoyment in my hobbies and creativity is coming back. My sex life is back to feeling like my 20’s and the return of my erections of my youth is amazing . My joint pain is still pretty bad and I’m unable to lift many weights but my trt doc just added deca which I received today to help with it as he wanted to see how I responded to my base trt protocol before adding anything else. Just about every aspect of my life has changed for the positive in the last 3 months and my marriage is back on cloud 9 and I’m active with my son like I haven’t been in a long time. I know this is a lot to read but it feels good to share with strangers as I don’t have a lot of open minded friends in regards to this kind of treatment and even know they have seen me going through it for years I just get written off as crazy. Anyway I’ll share my protocol now along with a couple questions I have with my new additions. Thank you.
4- 20ml subq inj. of 200mg test cyp (160mg a week total)
25 units of hcg twice a week subq
.25 mg anastrozole twice a week (I started getting rosey nipples and areolas were looking weird around week 8)
My bloods at the moment are
Total test 626 ng/dL
Free 13 ng/dl
Estradiol 19 pg/ml
SHBG 32.2 nmol/L
Albumin 4.2 g/dl
Just added and received from pharmacy today .5 ML of 200mg nandrolone twice a week prescribed.
My question is in regards to the deca.
Does 200mg a week seem high?
Does it require a loading phase and need to be that high?
I also would like to know if Subq will be as beneficial or more as IM. My prescription says IM twice a week but I’ve read mixed responses of both methods and would like to hear some more current knowledgeable experiences. I prefer the ease and lack of pain of Subq with my cyp as I’m sticking myself so many times a week but I also want to get the most out of my treatment.
Again. That’s a whole lot of crazy **** to digest and I apologize if my writing isn’t the best.
