My back is doing better today, but something feels weird in my upper abdominal area.
I still can’t believe how much physical damage just 3 doses did.
I hate myself.
These fluctuating symptoms are starting to piss me off.
First my back is hurting and my stomach is fine, then my stomach feels bloated and uncomfortable while my back is fine.
I think I need to find something to do to keep my mind off this shit.
I think I reached some kind of plateau with my recovery.
Will check in few minutes each day for messages, but I will be taking a break from these forums. I’ve been feeling very depressed lately.
For some reason, I had difficulty falling asleep last night. I think I only got around 5 hours of sleep.
In other news, my back is doing much better recently. I could walk longer than before without pain.
My joint popping noises have gone down significantly.
My digestion is still not right, but at least I’m not in pain.
Hope everyone is doing well.
Have you really entirely recovered from the cognitive and sexual issues? I’d say that’s a massive victory in itself. How long did it take?
Not quite. I recovered from debilitating mental and sexual issues, but some symptoms are still there.
I can get boners pretty easily. My balls don’t hurt anymore. My penis doesn’t look shriveled. The only things that remain are slightly lower libido and being attracted to men.
It took 4 months since quitting.
Could you expand a little on how your cognitive issues are doing? And by 4 months, do you mean you recovered at the 4 month mark, or that you are currently 4 months after quitting? If it’s the latter, can you remember at what point you reached your current level of recovery? As in, was it quite early on, or just recently? And if you don’t mind sharing, are your erections as big as pre-fin?
Best of luck in the future, of course. You are 3 weeks ahead of me in your recovery, hence me being so interested in the specifics of how you’re doing!
Immediately after taking fin, I had a dizzy sensation, memory issues (Forgetting what just happened 2 seconds prior), large headaches, blurry vision.
After stopping fin, the headaches, blurry vision and dizzy sensation went away. My memory issues continued until about the 2 month mark before finally going away.
Aside from the first month off fin, I had a consistent recovery trajectory with all my symptoms with minimal setbacks. The first month was hell. Constant itchy scalp, immense hair loss, fat and muscle loss, stomach pains, diarrhea after every meal, pain everywhere in my body, etc. I literally got hit with almost every single symptom.
Strangely, whenever I feel as if I’ve reached a recovery plateau, my body recovers even more in the next few days.
Hey, guys.
So far, I’m making good progress on my joints and back pain.
Joints continue to pop less and less each day.
Back pain is going down too. I’m able to walk more and more each week before the pain appears.
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Things continue to get better and better for me.
That constant back pressure (Not pain) i had finally went away a couple of days ago!
I felt so happy yesterday pacing 5 hours non-stop and feeling no pain, pressure and discomfort!
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I believe the old symptom list no longer applies to me, since I no longer suffer from any of the issues on that list barring digestive issues.
My current symptoms:
-
Popping/cracking joints
This has actually gotten worse in the past couple of days after improvements. Very unsettling. -
Digestive issues
Still suffering from this, but I believe I’m better able to tolerate certain foods. I had ramen and gatorade recently, and I haven’t had any growling stomach and explosive diarrhea like I did last month. -
Sleeping issues
I think this is improving slowly. It’s like I’m sleeping a couple minutes more every week, but I’m still able to sleep for at least 6 hours every night. -
I can’t feel full
I can eat a lot and not feel full. It feels like leptin resistance. As long as this doesn’t cause health complications, this is a manageable symptom by just being cautious about my food intake. -
Lower libido
This is obviously the least of my problems. I can still easily achieve and maintain full-sized erections, so I don’t really care about this symptom -
Homosexuality
I turned gay a few weeks ago. This is another non-issue, because I’m not married or in a relationship with anyone in the opposite sex. I can live with this symptom.
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Hey, guys.
I’m continuing to see small improvements every day.
I’m more optimistic these days, and I can actually go most of the day without thinking about PFS.
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That’s great! Any incremental improvements is good to hear about. I’m similar in that PFS is becoming less of a focus for me. I think that has to be a good sign that I’m through the worst of it - hopefully anyways!
I hope you continue moving in that direction. Keep us posted!
This is good to hear. Could you pinpoint how your cognitive and sexual issues are doing? Are they really back to normal, or just so low-level that you don’t really worry about it anymore? And with regards to libido, I find it weird that symptoms can get better in so many areas, but not with libido. I would have imagined that libido would improve in line with erections, but it seems that isn’t the case. Has your libido improved at all?
Anyway, hope things keep improving man. Very glad to hear you’re able to stop thinking about the condition all the time. Here’s hoping for a 100% recovery.
I still have low libido, and it’s honestly the only side effect that hasn’t improved in the past few months. I can still get and maintain an erection pretty easily. My semen volume is normal, too. It’s like the thought of sex never crosses my mind, but when I force myself to think about sex, I get an erection pretty quickly. It’s very weird.
In any case, this isn’t really a big concern for me. I can live with this symptom.
Cognitively, it seems I’m fine. My short-term memory appears as good as it was pre-fin. In the past few months, I was having problems recalling even 5 alpha-numeric characters at once. I can now recall up to 12 alpha-numeric characters simultaneously similar to pre-fin. I use a random number generator online every day just to test myself. I make the online tool generate as many digits as possible, I stare at it for 2 seconds and try to recall as many as I can in order.
My short-term memory recovery really shows, as I’m able to do my work as well as I did pre-fin.
Overall, I’m seeing drastic physical improvements and good digestive improvements. No more back pain, less cracking joints (Some days, I get flare ups and it cracks more, but the overall trend is down), I can tolerate more carbs, no more itchy and inflammed scalp, muscles coming back, etc.
Another weird thing is that I think I’m re-growing hair on my left corner. I’m 100% sure I have more hair there than pre-fin. No question about it. I have no idea why.
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That’s a clever way of measuring short-term recall. Did you really do that pre-fin, so that you can compare the recovery? I can barely do 8, will try and work my way up to 12. How’s your vision, like issues with your eyes failing to comfortably focus on an object, and instead flickering around it? That’s a cognitive issue I get annoyed with. Also, a couple times I have had very brief experiences of libido returning, just a kind of electric feeling. Have you had any such temporary recoveries like that?
re: hair growing back, presumably the fin has had some level of persistent effect on the hair follicles. My hair has been growing a little slower, and the recession hasn’t progressed since I originally took the doses, so I presume something similar has happened to me.
Aside from the first few days, I think my vision hasn’t really changed. Seems normal like pre-fin.
As for my libido, unfortunately, it’s like the sexual interest reflex is gone. I don’t automatically think about sex like pre-fin. I can always force myself to think about sex and I get a boner in a few seconds. Considering the shit I went through, this is comparatively a non-issue and I can live with this.
I’m convinced finasteride fucked around with my hair follicle sensitivity to androgens. It’s like it reversed my sensitivity - The areas where I wasn’t balding are now balding and the areas where I was balding are now regrowing hair. I laughed when I saw hair growth in my former problem areas. It’s fucking ridiculous. My endo didn’t believe me until I showed him that problem area. He couldn’t even complete his sentence. It was unbelievable. He kept tugging the hairs in my left corner to see if it was real.
One thing I’m happy about is that he FINALLY admitted that finasteride can cause unexplainable side effects. It’s not much help to me, but it’s comforting to finally have a medical professional tell me straight up that my problems were probably caused by fin.
Well I’m glad you’ve come through the worst. Maybe your libido will slowly regenerate over the next several months, or even years? You’ve done the in-depth reading of member stories, so you’ll have a better idea than me!
And has your endo offered any guidance or told you when/how he expects a fuller recovery? At least he’s come to recognise PFS as a thing.
Also, for the thing about alphanumeric code memorisation, can you clarify how long it takes? I’ve been practising and I can do a licence-plate-sized code (7 characters where I’m from) with only a couple seconds, but for a 12 character code I need at minimum like ten seconds, to properly say the characters in my head so I can try and remember them. Can you really do it in just two seconds!?
Like all the other doctors I’ve seen, my endo didn’t give me any constructive advice.
He admitted that the symptoms I’m showing should “not be possible”, and he wouldn’t have believed it if he didn’t see it himself. The hair growth on my left corner was so fucking obvious compared to the last time I saw him.
Also, I wouldn’t try to compare your short-term memory with mine. Everyone is different. What’s important is how you compare to yourself pre-fin. I do believe the average white person can store up to 7 digits simultaneously and there’s not a wide variance in terms recall ability. Were you able to memorize more pre-fin?
Another area that finasteride screwed with is short-term memory manipulation. After you recall 7, try to recall the numbers backwards.
The average white or Asian person should be able to recall 7 digits forwards and backwards.
Hmm, three quarters of the time I can do 7 characters forwards and back, and when it doesn’t work, I do get this eerie feeling that my mind isn’t how it should be, even though I don’t experience active fogginess in my day-to-day life. But I am at a top 5 world university, and did very well in standardised tests when I was like 14, at school. I really hope this isn’t a bad sign.
How long exactly does it take you to memorise 12 character codes? Is it seriously two seconds? I feel like it takes me about five seconds just to read them at that long, seeing as it’s not an actual word or anything that your brain could easily apprehend.
And I have no idea how many I could have done pre-fin. Maybe 9 characters, on a good day, with a clear head? What was it that made you test yourself for this prior to taking finasteride?