Update on Testosterone Replacement Therapy

A couple of months ago, Aetna Specialty Pharmacy warned me that they were no longer going to be able to acquire my testosterone cypionate any longer. It’s not the first time they have told me that, so I didn’t worry about it… until I ran out and I had to scramble to get some other way to get my hands on this life-changing juice.

The quick background story on why I need testosterone therapy is that CFers are now known to be notoriously low with levels, though I haven’t researched why. One day at clinic I complained of lethargy and they did a testosterone level blood test and I came up way worse than an 80 yr old man. It was basically non-existent. No wonder I was tired. This is my second post on the subject, so for more, including a video of Fatboy, head over to Fatboy Gets Juiced Up – Testosterone Injection.

The issue was that I was prescribed 200 mg/mL dosage, so I was doing 1.5 mL every other week to come up with 600mg per month. I called Pharmaceutical Specialties (PSI) because they handle a few of my other things to see if they could get their hands on it, but they also came up blank, but they did find availability of 100 mg/mL and gave me the NDA number (like a serial number for meds) to check with Aetna one last time.

Aetna said they couldn’t get that – for whatever stupid reason that still eludes me to this day and that I’d have to get the Rx transferred to PSI and then request reimbursement from them. PSI sent me 6 weeks of dosage and my CF doctor changed my Rx to injecting once per week to maintain 600mg per month because your medical limit for thigh injection is recommended at 1.5-2.0 mL. We’re still waiting on the reimbursement process to complete, but I think it will work because I believe we followed all of the directions. It’s  only $57 or something like that for 6 weeks, so it’s not that big of a deal, but it’d be nice if it was still free like before.

In the end, though, I’m very satisfied with the changes for several reasons:

• weekly injections has all but eliminated the raging two days later – I feel much more even-level
• it’s easier to remember to inject every week
• they changed the needle to a 1½ inch smaller gauge needle (22 gauge instead of 20), so now there is no charlie horse, seepage of injection, or bleeding at the site
• unrelated, but still an improvement, I found it much better to inject while sitting on the top of our stairs because it’s a better angle for my leg to be completely relaxed.