My first estradiol injection

I gave myself my first estradiol injection earlier this week and it went really well. My HRT provider required that I did the first injection in their office, both so they could instruct me on the proper technique and verify that the medication was correct. I was pretty nervous about going in. My last few conversations with them hadn’t gone great and my doctor was not very eager to switch me over to injections. I was worried that I might have to actually communicate or be assertive, but fortunately, that wasn’t necessary. The whole appointment and injection went incredibly smoothly.

My biggest surprise was how easy giving myself the injection was. I had researched and memorized how to give myself the injection before the appointment, but I was still anxious. I have never had an issue with needles but this was different. I was going to stick a needle, in myself. This anxiety proved to be unwarranted. It wasn’t difficult to find the spot to inject and it didn’t hurt at all. The most uncomfortable part was just how long it took. All of the videos I had watched showed the injection taking only a couple of seconds, but my estradiol was different. The oil medium they used is incredibly thick and it takes forever to inject it all. It probably took 60-90 seconds to inject the entire syringe but it felt considerably longer. Despite the mild discomfort of my own impatience, the injection was super easy and pretty painless.

I am a couple of days out from the injection and I haven’t had any issues. The muscle I injected into was sore that evening and I experienced pain in my knees, but neither of those effects lasted until the next day. Mentally and emotionally, I feel the same as I did on oral estrogen. I was worried that I would have some mood problems from the sudden increase, but nothing like that occurred. The hardest part is breaking myself of the habit of taking estradiol every 6 hours. I still have the thought, “I need to go take my medicine” every 6 hours even though that is no longer necessary. A couple of times I have gotten pretty closed to taking it before realizing that I didn’t have to. It will take some time to break that routine.