Hormonally Challenged

As a pre-op T*Girl I'm on hormonal therapy. I take Premarin as an estrogen source and spironolactone as a testosterone blocker. They work together to promote female secondary characteristics and suppress male secondary characteristics. This results in breast growth, redistribution of body fat in a more female pattern, softening of the skin, reduction of body hair, loss of muscle mass and strength, withering of the testicles and prostate, various emotional changes, and numerous other changes.

As a prerequisite to surgery I need to be off of my estrogen for 3 weeks because of its effects on blood clotting (apparently it takes about 2 weeks for all of the exogenous estrogen to leave the body). I am, however, allowed to continue the spironolactone up until surgery. Most girls would simply go cold-turkey but I need to be more careful. I have an inner ear condition called Meniere's Syndrome. It's believed to have something to do with electrolyte imbalances in the inner ear and causes periodic bouts of vertigo, cold sweats, nausea, and vomiting. Anything that can upset my water balance can potentially cause an attack. I'm supposed to limit caffeine, salt, and alcohol. By all accounts I have a mild case and haven't had any problems at all since September. However, when I first went onto hormones my Meniere's went wild. I was started on a low dose of hormones in August of 2003. A month later, after all my blood tests can back positive, I had my estrogen tripled and my spironolactone doubled. This started at least a month of Meniere's misery. I ran to my ENT to see if anything could be done. After coming out to him as transsexual he told me that his female Meniere's patients typically experience changes in their symptoms as they go through their monthly cycles. I told him about my hormones and being bumped up and he kinda chuckled. He predicted that given some time my body would adjust. It did. The upshot of this is that I'm very leery now of making any drastic changes in anything, especially my hormones. So, for my surgery I'm going to taper off both the estrogen and the spironolactone. Today is the first day of this. I have a week to get off the estrogen and, although I don't have to stop the spironolactone, I'm going to take the rest of the month to taper off that as well. I'm hoping that tapering off will reduce the likelihood of Meniere's symptoms and also reduce the likelihood of PMS-like symptoms. I'll let you know how it goes.