Hi, I’ve been googling things for the past couple hours and it’s not offering me much to go off. Recently I had a blood test and have been approved to start testosterone as long as the blood tests came back okay (I need to forward the results when I pick them up to my doctor who deals with the gender side of things). However I got a call today from my gp doctor surgery and they wanted me to schedule an appointment with them to discuss the results of a few of the tests, indicating that they had found something abnormal. Should I be worried? I have to wait a week for my appointment so I figure it’s not particular urgent. Although is it likely to prevent me from being able to start T or is it likely just to be something common and easily solved? I know no one on here can know so I’m just asking for people’s experiences and the likelihood of things as I know I’m just going to be continuously anxious for the next week now wondering if anything is seriously wrong.
Sounds like it's going to be a long week for you and I'm sorry for that, but if all you were told was there's something abnormal that the doctor wanted to discuss with you, I don't know that there's a lot you can know about what it might be until you go to that appointment. My advice to you is to remind yourself that worrying isn't going to allow you to have that information sooner. Perhaps it would help to keep busy with other things this week, so that you don't really have time to worry. I don't know anything about the blood tests that would be required before starting HRT, though. If anyone else knows more, please correct me.
A lot of people have things come up in their blood tests and most of them don't usually cause T to be postponed for long. I've heard of guys being put on hold because of low vit D... we live in the UK... we're all bloody vitamin D deficient! Personally I had to get my prolactin tested again as it was abnormally high, even when it was retested it was high but I was given the go ahead for T anyway because they figured the cause for the high levels was because I was on the progesterone only pill. I really don't think you have anything to be worried about. GPs are usually totally clueless about trans issues and like to do things completely by the book to cover their own backs, which unfortunately slows things down for us but we all get there in the end. I've heard of quite a few guys, when getting their first blood test for T, to have to see their GP for some alarming reason to find out that they'd been measuring against the wrong scale e.g. they were being measured against the male scale when they were still pre-T so everything was flagging up. Likewise for when you get on T and they might still be measuring you against the female scale. Always try to keep on top of it. If your GP surgery has changed your NHS number to a male one then everything should be correct on your forms and it should save a lot of hassle but some surgeries kick up a fuss about that without a GRC even though it's do-able. Let us know how you get on and I know a week will seem like an age at the moment but keep yourself distracted and focus on other things if you can.
Had the appointment today so thought I would post an update, there were slight abnormalities in the full blood count test that flagged up, however doctor wasn’t concerned due to how minimal they were. The main issue was vitamin D, which came back at 15 (30 or below being viewed as needing treatment) so I’ve been put on high dose medication for it for 6 weeks and then a lower dose daily following that for a currently undetermined period. Not sure if this will postpone T or if so for how long but at least it’s something that can be sorted/managed so that’s somewhat of a relief. Thanks @Aberrance especially though as your post did help me relax a fair bit about it hopefully not being too serious. Still was a fairly anxious week though.
Hopefully you getting T won't be delayed too long. I had low iron on my initial blood test, and mine wasn't postponed at all, I was just told to take iron supplements for a while. Not sure if that would be the same for vitamin D or not, but it shouldn't be too serious.
