Listing areas of improvement below, in no particular order, so please excuse the free flowing nature of the list.
Body hair: returned to hands, chest, and lower legs. Eyebrows are thicker and longer
Ear wax: there is significantly more
Sleep: I can sleep again, with much less interruption, and if I don’t pick up my phone, I can return to sleep. I am waking up earlier, and more refreshed
Muscle Wastage: it reversed a bit, then stopped. I no longer see my chest bones, even before the recent weight gain.
Appetite: I can eat anything, and developed a sweet tooth, like I have pre pfs, but can’t work it off like I could before.
Testicular size: back to normal most days, and descending normally most days. Occasionally, much larger than “normal”
Ejaculate: it had turned to water during pfs. It’s now a little thicker, with a little bit of white color. After 15 years, I don’t remember what normal was, but it’s not there yet. This is an undeniable change in its texture. After intercourse, it would embarrassingly “leak out”, but this thicker ejaculate seems to be staying put more often.
Orgasm: under pfs, it was absolutely gone. It was a zero, sometimes with slight sensitivity after ejaculating. Orgasm got to 5-10% of normal since starting hCG, but after what seem like high estrogen symptoms, it’s back to zero, but with consistent sensitivity after orgasm.
Emotional effects: after getting out of my depression, I’ve regressed a bit. Definitely not like before, but not “happy” either. The joy of being depression free was a couple of weeks of bliss, and gives me hope to get out of it again.
Memory: it was tied to the emotional effects. It was good to remember things and form sentences more easily. That too regressed a bit, but better than baseline.
Morning erections: they were gone almost all days under pfs and pre hCG, except for days with that daily viagra type pill (I’d only take it if there was a chance of intercourse). Under hCG, morning erections returned, being much firmer in the beginning days, until they stopped a couple of months later. After a one week pause and a reduction to 125iu, they have returned again. I actually had an erection that sustained even as I got out of bed.
Penis size: it became tiny after pfs. Embarrassingly tiny, to the point of almost not seeing a shaft at all. It’s about 3x larger now when flaccid. It was never really large before, or even normal, but clearly an improvement from what it was. When erect, it’s still not at its prior peak, which did happen on several occasions over the past decade. I never really found out why or how.
Random erections: lots before pfs, zero after. With hCG, I’ve had two or three, always either sitting or in bed, and they are short lived.
Breast tissue/size. I’ve gained weight, so there is more there, and it’s come on slowing, so it’s difficult to gauge, but they seem larger. I distinctly remember during a high school entry medical exam, the doctor noted “feminization of the breasts” and that I would outgrow it. I always wondered how many of us may have had something like this, and if it could be an indicator of pfs risk.
Desire: it seems to have improved from zero to a tiny bit in the first couple of months of hCG. I was really hopefully to “make up for lost time”, but it’s back to almost zero again.
Dreams: no dreams of any kind during pfs, except for a short time when I tried Wellbutrin for 90 days (it helped, but I stopped it before hCG, to not mix up results). For some reason, I found not having dreams frustrating and depressing. They occasionally returned under hCG, and I’ve actually had a couple of sexual dreams of women I’ve been with.
I’ll add that many years ago, before PFS, I got worried about prostate cancer (relatives had it). One of the things I read was that men who ejaculate daily/regularly had less likelihood of getting it. Having not been a person who ejaculated regularly, I made it a habit to do so, to keep the potential for prostate cancer at bay.
Since PFS, I’ve continued this, at the rate of about once every other day, really more to keep everything from atrophying than to prevent prostate cancer. For what it’s worth, the mri/cat scan showed a normal to large size prostate.
I’ve got about a month and a half to go for being on hCG six months. So far, even with the setbacks, these are the best and longest lasting improvements I’ve had since pfs started. It’s nowhere near normal, but so much better than before.
My new endocrinologist says I can stay on hCG 12 months at this low dose. I suspect if the estrogen goes down to normal, I can stop the hCG and see what happens. I am hoping and praying for relief from this curse, and that this helps us, even if only partially.
