Testosterone

I have not made any updates to this blog recently because there hasn’t been anything to report. My extremely low energy, my headaches, and my hot/cold flashes have kept me sidelined. Last week my hormone levels were checked, as I reported. On Friday I started a replacement therapy for an underperforming thyroid gland.

This morning my phone rang. It was the endocrinologist calling me personally.

He said, “We finally got the numbers back on your testosterone level. Uh . . . we need to treat it.”

I had been waiting for this. Prior to the first surgery, my number was 114. (Normal, healthy males my age score somewhere between 300 and 800.)

“Great, “ I said. “I assumed we’d have to treat it. Two brain surgeries is not going to make a low number go up. So what’s the new number?”

“Seven,” the endocrinologist said.

“Wait . . . seven? As in the number seven? SEVEN?? On a scale up to 800?”

“Yes.”

(Jaw drop + profanity.) So there you have it, and that explains my overwhelming sense of ennui, not to mention why I can’t open jars anymore. My pituitary gland is officially kaput. Squished. Stick a fork in it, because that turkey is done. It would take fifty of me to equal one Woody Allen. Er, maybe that’s a bad example. Still, I am at 1/100 the level of your typical British MI6 agent.

So today MJ—also not doing well, by the way, battling major pain with an infected wisdom tooth—will bundle up and go fetch my treatment. From now on I will have a daily packet of gel to smear all over my shoulders and chest. This is something I will need to do “for about the next twenty years,” according to the endocrinologist.

I appreciate doctors who speak plainly, but this was maybe one of those times I would have preferred a little white lie.