I'm posting this warning regarding male hormone therapy because of the way it affected me.  I had to undergo it in the last 5 of the 15 years of illness I experienced as result of an injury. The side effects were horrendous. I want to share them with you here.

Before the therapy was initiated, which required biweekly injections of 300 m somethings  each, I rated on the blood masculinity analyzer at 64 pts. The average required to sustain life was 400. There was some question as to whether or not I was dead. At near 60 years of age, I saw myself  growing old, finally feeling the aging process. I remember thinking, "So this is what it is like to be done for."

If a ravishing woman other than my wife presented in the media, or even walked by, or sat across from me when at dinner with friends,  my thoughts were "I wonder what ever happened to sex in this culture? I guess we've all finally been desensitized to the extent that we're above that, now." And thinking further, "Now I understand what Socrates meant when he said upon reaching the age of 70, 'Glad I've made it this far so I don't have to worry about sexual relationships and all that stuff anymore!' or something close to that."

It was as if the women nurses and doctors who worked on, around, and over me fairly routinely were not really there, as women, as they always had been when I was less mature. I needed a cane to walk. Neither exercise nor even positive thinking altered this nice easy slide toward and into morbidity. I was appropriately being warehoused as a male entity, sending recollections of feminine adventure into the recesses of my medicated archives. I might add that the 11 medicines that I took for my condition were seen as contributory to the ending of this aspect of  life.

Masculinity was gone. Young people were competitively if not too preoccupied with themselves, I thought, especially as concerned with trying to figure out their sexualities and so forth. I had to leave the room when a movie exploited sex to give the picture show meaning. I was looking forward to my demise, as I wasn't sure about the purpose of hanging out, other than to try not to be a quitter. Incidentally, 4 of the 11 medications I took for my previous injury and chronic condition were new class antidepressants intended not just to keep the damage to the nerves in my body from causing unendurable pain, but to also keep me from thinking negatively.

And each of those meds said on the container's label "If you take any of these, don't drive heavy equipment or try to have sex. The first is dangerous and the latter impossible." My doctors all told me that I would never have sex again. I had to hire all work around the house to be done by carpenters, handymen and weight lifters. In a nutshell, I had nothing left to add and no one would certainly ever have to be guarded against me for prospective sexual harassment. I guess I was now harmless, no longer a threat to any woman's everyday peace and serenity.

On the 3rd day following the first shot, I noticed that I was able to get up the 3 flights of stairs to my condo without a crane, a new respiratory system, or oxygen. A week later, I noticed that my driver to the VA hospital was a woman. After the second injection, I began to make sure that I was available to hold the car or hospital doors for her.

Following the 3rd shot, I thought anew that life appeared interesting. If a woman passed by, my head automatically began to turn again, following her direction before remembering not to be rude. In the eighth week, 4th shot, I began to wonder where I'd been for the last 10 years or so since my injury that led to all this. I gave up my cane and started exercising again, walking. The extra weight around my waist felt suddenly unattractive. After shots 5, 6 and 7, now putting me out over 90 days and a blood hormone level of 475, the average for achieving molecular masculinity I was told, I also noticed each nurse's waistline, especially as it related to the other lines. The curve of a woman's calf began to take on great meaning. When a female doctor required that I remove my shirt, and then posture close to me for measuring some facial variable needing measuring, or if even to lean over my chest and head before rolling me into the MRI tunnel complex, I wondered if she was aware of how her closeness affected men when helping us all so professionally.

It got worse, much worse, which is why I've written this warning. I noticed every woman's shoes. Even tennis shoes and workout clothing began to look sexual on women. If a woman stood next to me, or across the counter while I was trying to buy something in a store, I would notice her eyes, their color, length of lashes, shaping of her eyebrows, the way her hair would relate to her neck, wondering if it would be offensive to brush it back with my fingertips where such adjustments were appearing to be warranted, that is, adding to the beauty attending the woman's femininity in the presentation of herself.

In this artificial molecular transformation, I saw the world around me as I did, of all things, when I was 21 years of age. I mean, it was like being 21 again, but now with the great wisdom and understandings  about the opposite sex I had acquired over the just negotiated 4 decades, erudition not available to me way back then when only an aggressive young boy and newly becoming — often even blundering — adult male.

I wasn't only coming back to life, I was starting over. I actually looked upon the world as if all things were possible. And women were an intriguing part of that again, as they had once always been. I was becoming no doubt the incarnated antithesis to political feminism.

Sparing you the physical particulars, sex became a great and pleasurable life force as never before my sensibilities would grace me. But more than that, I could stand next to a woman while in conversation about some important matter related only to something important, that is, and feel her senses, the way she breathed, and see how alive was her skin. I would notice above all things how her pulse complimented the flow of her neck while talking about the objective issues ongoing between us. I believed that I could actually feel through the air between us a woman's contribution to sensuality even through the cultural correctness requiring control of my now apparently extant, but of course always lesser, male vagaries.

The locus of the greatest change, however, didn't seem to reside in my blood supply. I mean, where in my pre injury life women had never been drawn to me as they seemed to be to sexually attractive men, all of a sudden the opposite sex were surrounding me, and coming closer at that. I was given attention routinely and without distinction by marital or other cultural statuses regarding availability. And my advancing age and consequent depreciating physical appearance did not stop the startling invitations from coming. Rather they continued routinely no matter the setting, staid or otherwise.

The reader will likely be glad to hear that I was saved from this new intrusion upon my medical condition when I had to for more complex biological reasons give up the hormone therapy. I'm sure that you will be relieved to hear that the wild changes undergone during that period of care have abated, and that I've long since re entered the aging process mandatorily and methodically as I realize I should. Shaking off that medical therapy and returning to normal, that is, the state of physical and psychological being attending aging, has brought my mind back to the comfort referenced earlier, of no longer having to contend with the old Greek's analysis of the burden of "sex and stuff."

Now, hopefully, you will be able to avoid the same experience by in time declining male hormone therapy should it be recommended in your medical future. Good luck. I know that you will do the right thing for yourself and your loved ones, the main thing and moral of this story of course being to never interfere with process of growing old.

 Jesse (Skippy) Collins

Syringes are supplied with the bottled testosterone. And it takes about 2 or 3 minutes to give one's self the shot of 300 mls, depending of course upon the dosage delineated by the prescription, but not to exceed administering 900 over a month. At that level, patient and partner(s) should prepare themselves for everyday sexual shock and awe.