Mini-Post: Estradiol

When I first started taking Estradiol, my doctor sat me down and told me about the possible side effects.

Three years later, I had diabetes.

At my annual checkup, after the lab work, my PCP called. My blood sugar was 500+! He told me to call my endocrinologist.

"Yeah, okay, so what?" I thought at the time. I had no idea what that meant; it was just a number.

I called my endocrinologist and she said, "I have an opening in a half hour, can you make it?" I had been going to my endocrinologist long enough to know you don't get an appointment in a half hour—it's more like six months.

At the appointment, she said that I had to take insulin. I pictured a two-inch needle an eighth of an inch in diameter, and shivers ran up my spine! (It was only a quarter-inch long and about a thirty-second of an inch in diameter.)

But the point I want to make is this: doctors explain the risks we face when taking medications, and we make an informed decision. Minors do not take anything that cannot be reversed, and when they are old enough to make an informed decision, then they can take hormones.